• On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages

tension between Iran and the U.S. stemmed from an increasingly intense conflict over oil.British and American corporations had controlled the bulk of Iran’s petroleum reserves

1951 Iran’s newly elected prime minister,Mohammad Mossadegh, announced a plan to nationalize the country’s oil industry

the American C.I.A. and the British intelligence service devised a secret plan to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with a leader who would be more receptive to Western interests

Through this coup, code-named Operation TPAjax, Mossadegh was deposed and a new government was installed in August 1953

Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi to over after Mossadegh. The Shah’s government was secular, anti-communist and pro-Western.