On November 4th, 1979, a group of pro-Revolution Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in reaction to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s granted asylum and cancer treatment in the United States and the U.S.’s perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution.
The hostage crisis has made a name for itself as a one of America’s most prominent international failures. Jimmy Carter had failed to come to the aid of American diplomats overseas. 444 days. 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran for 444 days. There were numerous attempts at rescue, the most prominent being Operation Eagle Claw; none of them were successful until the Algiers Accords.
President Jimmy Carter's decision to undertake a rescue mission of the American hostages…show more content… Despite the accords, the economic sanctions against Iran are still pretty hefty today, with many of Iranian assets still frozen because of pending legal issues needing to be resolved, and crippling costs of everyday necessities force the gap between the West and the rest further apart, despite more than 30 years having passed.
Just a short time prior, the United States was, argued by many, living in a unipolar world, with itself as the leader. The Accords are an example of the concessions made and diminished power you see the nation hold in face of Post-Cold War crises, something which realists such as Stephen Walt and Mearsheimer don’t completely view to be negative. Balance of power and the drive for optimal wealth and influence shape foreign policy and IR, as coined by Walt. Bipolarity is from this perspective viewed to be the most stable world atmosphere, and the increasing Anti-Western sentiment that came with the rise of Middle Eastern and Arab-world conflicts challenges not only Western hegemony, but unchecked, also results in multipolarity, a clear potential problem the Middle East and Iran now…show more content… It can be seen that with correlation of expressed desire to go nuclear, US sanctions against Iran have simply increased in number and variability, from the 1995 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to CISADA (Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act) in 2010. Both of these essentially provided penalties to other nations attempting trade with Iran and/or supporting its nuclear program, and while limitation of power is most definitely a realist principle, thinkers such as Kaplan, Mearsheimer, Walt, and even Kissinger of all people, believe the United States should not be as heavily insecure and persecutive of Iran’s nuclear program as we have shown ourselves to
