Well worth reading, a real insight into what the US Embassy staff experienced.

I have no personal recollection of the Iran Hostage Crisis, having only been a year old at the time, and until reading this book I had no idea what a game changer it was. For over a year, 52 American civilians were kidnapped and imprisoned in their embassy by a small group of young, armed, hothead "students" (including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). No one had a clue what to do next - the captors, the Iranian government, the American public, or, unfortunately, the Carter administration. Everyone involved must have seethed with impotent rage. And even though all hostages were ultimately released without casualty, no one could have been satisfied with the outcome.

Mark Bowden spent five years writing this book, and his attention to detail is astounding. He really gets inside the head of at least a dozen of the hostages. It's very interesting just how differently they react to confinement, torture, and the threat of execution. Some try to curry favor with their captors. Some become troublemakers and instigators, despite the punishment they know they will face. Some retreat inward or choose to ignore their reality.

It's hard not to compare and contrast Carter's hostage crisis and Obama's hunt for bin Laden. Carter attempted a super-risky secret military operation to rescue the hostages on the eve of his reelection campaign. It failed spectacularly and probably cost Carter the election. If Seal Team Six had similarly failed in 2011, would McCain be president?

An excellent read by the author of "Blackhawk Down." I learned four important things:

1. the "Desert One" rescue mission had been aborted by its commander, Col. Charlie Beckwith, BEFORE the one helicopter crashed into a C-130, causing the death of 8 servicemen. It wasn't the case that this crash caused the mission to abort.

2. Saddam Hussein's attack on Iran occurred in Sept. 1980 and was a direct result of Iran's weakened and isolated position nearly a year after the crisis began. And this assault thwarted a very good chance that the hostages would be released prior to the US election; in fact, there was one more near-release just before the election.

3. There likely was no "October surprise" engineered by candidate Reagan's team to prevent the hostages' release before the US election. There were very near successes, including the one thwarted by Iraq's attack.

4. The Iranians (clerics and student leaders alike), totally misread the US political situation and didn't understand the difference between Reagan and Carter. They just hated Carter and didn't want him to get any credit for the hostages' freedom. So, although Carter's team (Warren Christopher especially) worked hard in the last few months of 1980 to broker the final deal that set the hostages free, the Iranians didn't let the hostages go until the day of Reagan's inauguration. During the last half of 1980 in fact, and even after the election, Reagan and his team had nothing to do with the situation. At all.

It's easy to think of the hostage crisis as a single story, but it really wasn't. Each hostage (and captor) had their own perspectives, episodes, coping mechanisms, plots, plans, history, motivations and experiences. Bowden brings these different voices out beautifully and still manages to weave them together into the larger context of the time, region, and world stage.

There are big issues with shouting freedom and liberty while orchestrating the fall of a democratically elected government to install a dictator (understatement much?). This is one of the starkest examples of how that hypocrisy can be used to fuel hatred and violence over many generations. There's also a whole lot of tension between shouting death to America on Monday and begging for an American visa on Tuesday. And plenty of people willing to hijack protests for their own purposes. These stories provide food for thought on all three fronts.

p. 93 "In a complete reversal of the sentiments he had expressed earlier, Khomeini warmly supported the move and praised the students. Yazdi was not surprised. He had come to know Khomeini, and despite the ayatollah's fierce visage, he was a maddeningly vacillating man. In political matters, he tended to side with whomever last had his ear, and because he often regarded the affairs of state as trivial compared to his spiritual concerns, he was usually reluctant to make unpopular decisions."

p. 127 "The embassy seizure had tapped a well of Muslim resentment that stretched well beyond the borders of Iran. In practical terms it was nothing more than a cheap shot - the embassy had been defenseless - but symbolically it was a major blow."

p. 136 "The logic of deterrence seemed not to apply to rogue hostage takers in a country that celebrated martyrdom."

p. 141 "In less than forty-eight hours, a group of students from the big universities in Tehran had engineered a mini-coup d'etat. The takeover of the US embassy had ignited a great storm of anti=Americanism and anti-secularism, which swept aside any prospect of a conventional, Western-style nation. Religious conservatives were going to shape Iran's future, not the secular nationalists, socialists, and communists who had dominated the movement's educated class."

p. 236 "They were confused kids living in a bizarre society that for reasons of religion or tradition closed off most of the usual avenues of growth and self-improvement. It produced young people who were restless and ignorant, ripe for a demagogue, and in Khomeini they had found their man."

p. 240 "The postrevolutionary struggle was between the victors: the nationalists and the Islamists. They had united to throw out the shah but were now locked in a struggle to shape the new Iran. Limbert saw that he and his colleagues had become pawns in this struggle; they were being used by the fundamentalist mullahs to finish off their former nationalist allies and even moderate clerics who opposed a totalitarian theocracy."

p. 314 "They wanted information about Iranian officials that they could use against their political enemies. In the present atmosphere in Tehran, anyone could be smeared with suspicion of treason if it could be shown they had met with American 'spies'. Careers could be derailed, enemies brought down. Whoever was running this thing now had a very practical agenda, one that was local and ruthless."

p. 346 "But at least some of the group's leaders wanted out. Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, the author of the takeover, felt trapped. He believed they had backed themselves into a corner ... Now even if they had wanted to back down they could not, because their continued occupation of the US embassy gave leverage to hard-line clerical elements opposed to the government. ... With their hostages, the students had become pawns in the battle over the future of Iran."

p. 401 "A pattern had developed: Carter would latch on to a deal proffered by a top Iranian official and grant minor but humiliating concessions, only to have it scotched at the last minute by Khomeini. The White House was feeling pressure from both sides, from those who thought it hadn't done enough to comply with Iran's demands and those who felt the president had gone too far."

p. 501 "Despite their political differences, both the embattled Iranian president and his radical religious opponents imagined a White House completely obsessed with Iran. Since they considered the United States not just amoral but evil, they developed stunning hypotheses of American deceit. Bani-Sadr accused the United States of sending teams of assassins to find and kill its own captive countrymen in an effort to bring further ignominy on Iran. Increasingly, he blamed America for the whole mess, and in time, would convince himself that the United States had actually planned and instigated the takeover of its own embassy, and that the Muslim Students Following the Imam's Line were either dupes or directly employed by the CIA."

p. 548 "Now as the one-year anniversary of the embassy takeover approached, as Soviet troops built up in Afghanistan, as world opinion continued to condemn Iran, as economic sanctions ... began to have a noticeable effect, and as Saddam Hussein's military might massed on the nation's western border and increasingly menaced Iranian forces inside their own country ... it was all too clear that Iran would only become further isolated and vulnerable if the hostage standoff continued. While popular opinion still responded enthusiastically to anti-Americanism and calls for trying the hostages as spies, more practical elements in the country's leadership, including some in the clergy, realized they could no longer afford to indulge in this warm bath of popular anger."

p. 562 "As a show of defiance, it had been a yearlong, televised Boston Tea Party. If the past twelve months had proved anything, they had demonstrated how powerless the United States was to influence anything in the new Iran; if the embassy takeover had done nothing else, it had broadcast Iran's total independence to the world. It had produced unforgettable images of America humbled: blindfolded hostages, burning flags, and the charred remains of airmen and helicopters in the desert, dead even before striking a blow. But Iran was now paying a terrible price in the real world for its symbolic triumph."

This very long book (after all, it reflects the 444-day hostage-taking of diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran from 1979-1981) goes into detail about the takeover, how the militant "students" treated the hostages, their daily lives, the efforts to help and free them, and how the takeover put Iran into a place from which it has not yet recovered, as a thug among nations and a repressive "mullahocracy" (author's word) that has made life there a misery for many. The book does not drag and at times reads like a suspense thriller, as the United States attempts a rescue and as the hostages' hopes of release rise and fall and rise again.

The thing that struck me most was the close=mindedness of the Iranians who took over the embassy and the government--they were convinced that the United States and the CIA were focused intently on Iran, with plots and conspiracies everywhere, even though the embassy was not well-staffed for intelligence operations and the U.S. government and State Department were just trying to get some hold on understanding what was going on in the country since the Shah left power. The Carter Administration made a huge mistake in not evacuating and closing the embassy before allowing the ex-Shah into the United States for medical treatment.

President Carter showed admirable patience and restraint in a situation where nothing he could do would be the right move. The nations of the world were remiss in not demanding that Iran observe the rules of diplomacy. No one got everything right; in hindsight, it is still hard to know what the United States should have done once the embassy was taken over. The hostages had different attitudes toward how they should respond to their situations, some belligerent, some cooperative, all threatened with being spies and with trials and execution, some tortured and beaten. The author has thoroughly researched the crisis, drawing on interviews at the time the hostages were released and more recently, when they were available. The book barely touches on the plight of the embassy staff who escaped to the Canadian ambassador's residence; for that story, see the book Argo by Tony Mendez. This book is far-enough removed from the crisis to have some perspective and close enough to primary sources to have telling details.

I truly enjoyed and learned so much from this novel that I was not aware of. I also found a new appreciation for the role that President Carter tried to follow through this most difficult time in our country's history

Really excellent research and very well written. A story that deserved to be told at this depth. I found the first third or so a bit tough to follow as there were a lot of names to learn and it started slowly for me. Really gained steam though.

Interesting and detailed story of the 1979-1980 hostage situation in Tehran. I didn't remember some of the facts of this story, and Bowden provides plenty of details.

I laughed aloud at the pugnacious Marines, had forgotten Iraq bombed Tehran (and the US military hostages being kept in Evian prison recognized the sound of the MIGs almost immediately and knew what was happening), and just felt badly about the whole thing all over again.

And that terrible Irani woman, "Mary." Ugh.

Worth reading.

Wow- so many parallels to today's political issues

Excellent read! We need to learn the lessons from this period in history to avoid going down the wrong path.

I'd been meaning to read this for quite some time, and I'm glad I finally did. The specifics of the Iran hostage crisis were always obscure to me, and I've read only fragmentary accounts by various participants, mainly by members of the Delta Force element. The added perspective of the hostages and their centrality to the story is what makes this book such a gem.

The Iran hostage crisis is little remembered today, but when it is, it is unfortunately presented in a way that that reeks of partisan politics. It the subject of little public debate, except silly, contrived "liberal vs. conservative" arguments that just distort things like they always do.

Flag-waving, catchphrase-spouting, chronic-labelist conservatives use the crisis merely to attack Carter and accuse him of making America weak, impotent, and apologetic. They claim that if Reagan wa sin office, the hostages would have been rescued sooner and Iran would somehow have been too scared of the big bad U.S. of A. to be as aggressive and bellicose as they are today. That is sheer speculation.

For one, the decision to abort the rescue operation was not Carter's. Carter approved the operation, and when it went sour (as a result of a tragic accident that was in no way influenced by Carter), the ground commander, Beckwith (not Carter) aborted the mission. Carter was not involved in the decision to abort, and it was probably the right call, anyway. And, as Bowden notes, the mission's chances of success under any circumstances would have been iffy at best.

There's also the myth that the Iranians finally released the hostages because they were scared of big, bad Ronald Reagan and his tougher national security policies and promises to make America great and strong. Again, wrong. The Iranians released the hostages after Reagan got elected because they wanted to discredit Carter, not because of anything Reagan said, did, or would have said or done. If the Iranians were so scared of Reagan ,why did their Hezbollah proxies attack Americans in Lebanon? And while Reagan blasted Carter for "doing nothing", neither did Reagan propose what should have been done instead.

Speaking of American ignorance, allow me to recall an episode from the book: When a reporter asked an American citizen what should eb done about the crisis, the citizen replied, "Force should be used." When the reporter asked "But what if responding militarily would mean that the hostages would be harmed?", the American, with extensive knowledge and experience of hostage rescues (*rolls eyes*) replied, "No , then we shouldn't use force. I don't want them to be harmed."

Now for some liberal myths about the crisis: many of them claim that the revolution was a legitimate response to the CIA-sponsored coup of 1953 that deposed the "democratic" Mossadegh and put the Shah in power. Thus, they claim that the US got itself into this mess by deposing a democracy and installing a dictatorship. There's some flaws in this theory, mainly since Mossadegh was anything but a democratic politician, and was hardly missed when he was deposed.

Bowden covers this in detail as he explores the reactions of the US public and media to the crisis. While their protests were justified, none of the American public demonstrated much wisdom or tact in how to handle it better than Carter. Some US protestors shouted "Nagasaki, Hiroshima, why not Iran?" Amazing.

The pious second-guessers of the News-Tribune of Tacoma, Washington boldly concluded that, "It may be too early to make a judgment, but first impressions are that the US badly bungled the rescue mission. Further, although Carter certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt at this point, it apperas he failed miserably in judgement and leadership."

The Phoenix Gazette accused Carter of undermining the rescue operation by trying to manage it himself from Wahsington instead of leaving it to the professionals in the field.

The Baltimore Evening Sun laughably offered the ridiculous opinion that authorizing the operation had been wrong because there was a chance it might not succeed. "any possibility of failure should ahve ruled it out." Hmmm, aren't all operations like that by nature?

Some Iranian protesters were similarly naive, as Bowden shows. Some of them thought that World War II had resulted because Hitler was determined to prevent America from seizing the oil supply of Peru. One of the students told an American hostage, the CIA station chief that America had been Iran's enemy for "four hundred years." When the station chief told the apparently well-educated student that America had been around for only some two hundred years, the Iranian simply dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

Thankfully, Bowden's book presents a balanced, panoramic study of the crisis. He details the experiences of both the hostages and their captors, of the media's coverage, and the friction between the revolution's radical and moderate elements. For example, Bowden shows that the moderates were sidelined as the ayatollah's backed the students that took over the embassy. While Americans today, with their disdain for intellectualism, their inability to grasp complexity, their obvious lack of nuance, and their unfortunate and eager tendency to lump all Muslim revolutionaries together and label all of them "radicals" or "terrorists", Bowden shows that this was clearly not the case.

The ostensible trigger for the crisis was the decision by the US to admit the shah to this country for treatment of the cancer that would eventually kill him. However, that decision was sold to President Carter by his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, who in turn was sold on it by Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller. As the years roll on, it's interesting how many disastrous US foreign policy decisions come back to Kissinger.

Further, the CIA was no better then at understanding and predicting events in the Islamic world than they are now. Shortly before the crisis erupted, the agency reported that the religious radicals would soon be relegated to the background there, so the US could deal with an emerging secular state with confidence. In reality, the country degenerated into a hurricane of religious nuttiness that soon swept aside all of the secular leaders. Quite literally, no one at all was really in charge of anything in Iran, and that's the reason the crisis dragged on for over a year.

This brings us to the role of President Carter. Nearly everyone felt at the time that he was too weak and vacillating to resolve the crisis. Not so; he tirelessly attempted to find a way to deal with the situation, but every attempt failed when the connection at the Iranian end fell apart. No one could have done much more, which is why presidential candidate Ronald Reagan continually criticized Carter, but never offered a word of explanation about what he would do.

The failed rescue attempt was blamed on Carter, too, but as Bowden makes clear, it had little chance of succeeding, mostly because the equipment available at the time was inadequate, and the situation was impossible. Even if Delta Force had made it to Tehran, it's likely that most or all of the hostages and rescuers would have died in the operation. Carter and the troops deserve credit for daring the attempt, even in the face of near-certain failure.

Bowden takes us inside the U.S. embassy just as the takeover was about to be launched. In short order, we meet an incredible cast of real-life characters, from street savvy embassy staffers like Michael Metrinko to clueless government officials and over-confident radicals. As the hostage crisis unfolds, we can see how the self-righteous "joy" over the initial takeover quickly degenerated into a sad drama of suspicion, prejudice and incompetence that dragged on for 444 days - much longer than anyone really wanted, including the hostage takers themselves.

To make matters even worse, the very same radicals who launched this tragic episode are now largely in control of the Iranian government. Many Americans are still clueless about the events that got us to this place. It's a bad dream that just won't go away...

Both Iran and the U.S. get their fair share of criticism in this exhaustively researched book. If you're looking for an "us vs. them, good guys vs. bad guys" treatment, don't look here. Bowden properly points out our massive intelligence failures before, during AND after the initial embassy seizure. Even the aborted rescue mission seems rooted in a fantasy cloud of wishful thinking. For their part, the Islamic radicals come across as typical "true believers" who never let the facts get in the way of the "truth." Like the Taliban, the ultimate legacy of the hostage-takers was to establish a dysfunctional, paranoid regime that poisons the soul of Islam and breeds violence throughout the Middle East. Lord save us all.

In this book, Bowden provides the intense, all-inclusive details from start to finish of the 444 day Iranian Hostage Crisis. The reader is taken inside the holding cell of each hostage and witnesses in vivid detail the daily routines, abuse, and emotions each hostage endured during their stay. I quickly became a fan of certain hostages such as diplomat Michael Metrinko, who so adamantly despised his captivity and insulted his captors for which he suffered solitary confinement and severe beatings up to the 444th day. While Bowden shares the heroic stories of the hostages, he doesn't disregard certain hostages who fellow captives felt were cowards and swine.

Bowden has become widely acclaimed for his ability to investigate the subject of each book and then transpose his research into dramatic details for readers, and Guests of the Ayatollah is no exception to his method. Where Guests of the Ayatollah differs from other Bowden books is in its significant focus on the Iranian and American political environments during the hostage crisis. Bowden provides an in depth summary of the Carter administrations options and its secretive negotiations with what still existed of the volatile Iranian government. Rather than provide his opinion on the performance of the Carter administration, Bowden does a fine job of avoiding personal bias, and allows the reader to reach an informed conclusion in regard to the politics surrounding the Hostage Crisis.

Some reviewers seem to feel that Bowden provides justification for the actions of the hostage takers. I don't believe this is accurate given that Bowden spends very little time examining the Shah's government other then to acknowledge America's continued support for the Pahlavi government up to the revolution. I found that on the controversial issues Bowden provides the facts and allows the reader draw his/her own conclusions. However, Bowden offers one prevailing conclusion that the Iranian Hostage Crisis established the power of the mullahocrasy in Iran, which runs the government to this day. The epilogue goes on to examine whether or not the hostage crisis benefited Iran, and concludes the establishment of the mullahocracy has done more harm to the country.

In all, Bowden has written an impressive account of the crisis and adequately explores the reactions of the US media and public to it.

He is not the focus of the book, but Carter may well be the last American president with genuine integrity.

Mark Bowden is the master of investigative journalism. While we know him best for his work on Killing Pablo and Black Hawk Down, this is an important story to better understand radical Islam and how the US dealt with the 1979-1981 Iran-hostage situation. I knew a lot of bullet-points but the book helped me to better understand what led up to the crisis and how the outcome has affected the past forty years of policy.