An American Hostage in Tehran

In 1979, the U.S. government allowed the deposed Iranian dictator Shah Reza Pahlevi to enter the U.S. for medical treatment. The narrator is Barry Rosen, a specialist in Persian and Central Asian studies. He was the American embassy press attachÐ"©. In the morning of November 4, the sidewalks and roadway around American Embassy in Tehran began to fill up with demonstrators. There were several dozen young men and women sporting plastic-covered pictures of the Imam on their chests. Suddenly there were several hundred demonstrators. They invade the U.S. embassy. The U.S. embassy has suffered another penetration nine months before. The security guards and the embassy employees cooperate with this people, some of them because they were feared for their safety. Barry Rosen sympathizes with the revolution’s original aim, but not with the violation of immunity right that he had been suffered. He felt kind of safe because the revolution had killed very few foreigners.

Students Following the Line of the Imam was the name of the group of people who invaded the U.S. embassy. They wanted to exchange American people for Shah. There was a group of about fifty captives, a handful were Americans. The popular opinion in Iran support what the Students Following the Line of the Imam were doing. They capture the Americans for 444 days. During that time, Barry Rosen felt demoralizing and shaming because they were not treating with dignity. Also, he did not understood why the Iranian press support that act and they did not mentioned anything about the international law violation.

We agree that Americans do not realized how much people from other country can hate America. Also, that Barry Rosen was very arrogant and he did not fully realize his position at that moment. Finally, we agreed also that in order to have a good media cover-up one probably need to do something violence.