Here’s what they didn’t tell me when I was in high school during the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 through early 1981 – 444 days:
They didn’t tell me that this was a complex story, that there was nearly a century of an evolving relationship, mostly very positive, between Iran and the US. They didn’t tell us that the Shah of Iran, the horse we backed for just long enough to get us into deep sh*t, built the 5th largest Army in the world, most of it with weapons he bought from the US – a mutually beneficial relationship.
The Shah (King) was wealthy beyond words and led a country that, at that time, was about as progressive as a majority Muslim country could get; women wore what they wanted, for the most part. They were educated, working, and an important part of a thriving (for some) country.
The new 4-part documentary Hostages, to its great credit, starts at the beginning, unlike so many stories that have just focused on those days inside the American Embassy, where the young captors apparently tortured some of the hostages, while many enjoyed a relatively comfortable existence, under the circumstances.
Directors Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre, along with Joshua Bennett, Abbas Motlagh and Sam Pollard show us several hostages and several of their captors – all of these people are now at least in their 60s or older. The funny thing is, in spite of the chants of “Death to America” (which, we learn, were often turned off and on depending on whether cameras were rolling) the Americans loved Iran and its people. They loved the culture, the language and the people of the city outside their 27 acre Embassy compound in the heart of Tehran.
By the same token, the captors say, some of them, that their intended 48 hour sit-in, something college students do all over the world to protest one thing or another, went way beyond their intentions. Others lament that their country became a Theocracy whose repression stretches from the death of a woman last week who refused to wear a head-covering, all the way back to 79-80, after the fall of the Shah and the government takeover by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The bottom line is that every single person screwed up – every unintended consequence became fact. President Carter screwed up. The previous Presidents going back to Eisenhower screwed up. The Iranian activists screwed up. The blame goes far and wide, and this doc doesn’t resort to jingoism, – it tells the whole story from all points of view.
History buffs who prefer facts over faint memories of one-liner chants from both Americans and Iranians, will absolutely be enthralled by Hostages
The first two episodes air back to back on September 28 and the second pair on September 29 on HBO. All four episodes of the series will be available to stream on HBO Max beginning on the 28th.
