Guests of the Ayatollah

The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam

Mark Bowden

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780802143037
• eBook ISBN:
  9781555846084
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The New York Times–bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a "suspenseful and inspiring" account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 ( The Wall Street Journal).
 
On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis.
 
Bowden takes us inside the hostages' cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world.
 
"The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page." — Time
 
"A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
"Essential reading . . . A." — Entertainment Weekly

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part One: The “Set-In”
• 1: The Desert Angel
• 2: Would the Marines Shoot
• 3: The Morning Meeting
• 4: We Only Wish to Set-in
• 5: Michael, I'm Really Sorry
• 6: Hostage to Whom? For What?
• 7: Shoot Me, Don't Burn Me!
• 8: Ann, Let Them In
• 9: I Told You So
• 10: I'm Going to Cut Out This Eye First
• 11: Gaptooth
• 12: Go and Kick Them Out
• 13: Wheat Mold
• 14: Okay, Go Ahead and Shoot
• 15: An Island of Stability
• 16: Two Minutes of Hate
• 17: Obviously, We Don't Want to Do This
• 18: Yes, And This is for You
• 19: George Lambrakis
• 20: "R" Designation
• Part Two: Den of Spies
• 1: We Don't Have the Shadow or Superman
• 2: Forgive Me, oh Imam
• 3: Only Whores Go Without Underwear
• 4: World-Devouring Ghouls
• 5: Davy Crockett Didn't Have to Fight His Way In
• 6: The Corrupt of the Earth
• 7: The Largest Thefts and Exploitations in History
• 8: The Cure Is an Airline Ticket Out of Here
• 9: Escape
• 10: Captivity Pageant
• 11: Invasion and Opportunity
• Part Three: Waiting
• 1: They Started It, We Ended It
• 2: We Know What Route That Bus Takes
• 3: Happy New Year
• 4: That's Illegal!
• 5: A Marvelous Coup
• 6: A New and Mutually Beneficial Relationship
• 7: Savak! Savak!
• 8: Ham, They Are Crazy
• 9: Fie on Them All
• 10: The Atmosphere of Restraint Cannot Last Forever
• 11: I'm Not Going to Answer Questions from Anyone Wearing A dress!
• 12: I Think We're Ready
• Part Four: One Hundred and Thirty-Two Men
• 1: Bunny Sadr
• 2: A Beginning of the Dawn of Final Victory
• 3: You've Got a Mother
• 4: Welcome to World War Three
• 5: What the Hell Is This?
• 6: Two Loud, Dull Thunks
• Part Five: Haggling with The Barbarians
• 1: A Prison-like Place
• 2: Any Possibility of Failure Should Have Ruled It Out
• 3: S-E-N-D-N-E-W-S
• 4: Moral Sadness
• 5: I'm Going
• 6: The Braying of Donkeys
• 7: Buy Iraqi War Bonds
• 8: It Has Become a Qjuagmire
• 9: Weren't You Fed Amply?
• 10: We Don't Do Stuff Like That
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index