The American embassy in
Tehran is in the hands of Muslim students tonight.
They are holding hostages, one report says as many as 100, most of them American.
The State Department has set up a special task force.
Here in New York, Iranian students chained themselves to the Statue of Liberty.
The reaction in New York, whether or not it's a coincidence,
has been the occupation of the Statue of Liberty.
The demonstrators draped a banner demanding the United States return
the Shah to Iran.
My mother in law,
she would keep the radio on all night.
And it was the first thing that she heard.
Latest reports say as many as 90
Americans may be involved, others say as few as 35.
We hadn't had any calls from the State Department.
It just came across as a news report.
The government would not release
the names of any of the people who were being held.
At a news conference inside the compound
we were shown photographs taken yesterday of U.S.
marine guards at the embassy
after they were taken prisoner and blindfolded by their captors.
Outside the compound, "Give us the Shah!"
they cried, and we will free the Americans.
The U.S.
does not have a great number of options in dealing with
what is a very sensitive situation in which there is no central authority.
But one thing is certain,
there will be no bowing to the mob's demand for the return of the Shah.
In answer to the question, are we considering handing him over
or are there any plans to do so or to meet that demand?
The answer is no.
Your Highness, could I talk to you for just a moment?
How is your husband?
He's fine. Thank you.
Because of what's happened in Iran, would you consider going
to another country for treatment?
They invaded a sacred part - the embassy.
An embassy is a sacred part of any nation.
That's what they invaded.
The Ayatollah is condoning this.
And we want him!
There was demonstrations in the United States against Iran.
Americans were very angry, and rightly so.
Despite
a police ban, up to a thousand Iranian and anti-Iranian demonstrators
massed in Beverly Hills, the Iranians outnumbered and targets of violence.
There is little sympathy for Iranian students supporting the takeover.
Given the fact that most of the Iranian students
here in the United States are receiving the benefits of an American education
and at the same time supporting your student counterparts
in Iran who are holding Americans hostages, the American public
has begun to ask, should you be allowed to stay in the country?
I think the Iranians, if they don't like our government
and they don't like our system, I think they need to go back to Iran.
We're stick of being stomped on!
We're not gonna take it anymore!
We're sick of it!
America!
1979 was a time in American history
when we weren't feeling very good
about ourselves.
The Vietnam War had ended
in a terrible evacuation of our people from the embassy.
I remember the images of people
clawing to get on the last helicopters going out.
The economy was not doing very well.
Everything in the country was like negative, negative.
A gasoline shortage led to violence
over the weekend in Levittown, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia.
A new study shows the American people spend one fourth
of their entire personal income on buying and operating cars and trucks.
It is a crisis
of confidence.
It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit
of our national will.
America had
just been battered from one side to another.
We have another oil crisis so that basically people are waiting at the pumps.
The economy was tanking.
Everything seemed to be going wrong at the same time.
And this simply added to that sense.
Any encouraging news from Iran, Mr.
President? No.
Status quo, sir?
Yes, I'm afraid so.
President Carter's
special two man diplomatic mission to Iran remains stalled in Turkey.
The spokesman tried to counter a spreading bleak impression
that all diplomatic trails have led to a dead end.
The America who you know of John F Kennedy could go to the moon, all of a sudden
we can't do anything right and here's our people being held hostage in Iran.
And again, we can't do anything.
Initially, it wasn't easy for anybody
to get into Iran in the first few days after the seizure of the hostages.
But then the Ayatollah and his supporters realized that this was
a wonderful way to get the world's attention.
And a wonderful platform for their anti-American message
was to let the press in.
So then the press corps came in in droves.
and I was among those people who were allowed in.
At the embassy today, members of the Revolutionary Guard...
What made it riveting was that they had been able to do this,
that they've been able to seize
American diplomats and, you know and the odd marine, and hold them hostage
inside the American embassy, which they had occupied.
3000 of them apparently, in total defiance of international law.
I received a phone call
one morning in my hotel room.
It was this voice saying
this is the student followers of the imams line.
We are calling you from the Nest of Spies to tell you to be here at nine o'clock
because we have revelations to make.
It was rather haunting to know that the American hostages
were right there within shouting distance,
but we could do nothing for them.
We were taken into
one of the marine guard huts, I believe it was, where the students
would hold their press conferences.
The main reason of our occupation
in United States embassy
is to attack to America and its actions
and the expulsion of Shah from America.
They were very naive
if they thought that the United States could just hand the Shah over.
If the America doesn't answer to our demand we will never
release the
hostages and we will never release the embassy.
In case if United States decide to do something to release these hostages,
you must be sure that they will definitely be killed.
I'm not even sure
they fully understood that seizing the embassy
was an act of war.
As far as we knew,
everybody in the embassy had been taken.
For the first 72 hours it was basically just what we could get
from our intelligence sources, which of course was limited.
At the State Department, a special working group
was on duty around the clock trying to monitor developments in Iran.
But there's a tremendous sense of frustration...
We had a report from the Iranians actually covering the event,
that the son of Ayatollah Khomeini
came to the embassy and climbed over the wall, lost his turban,
and then got in and announced the Iranian government
was fully behind the people who took the hostages.
And at that point, it was very clear that until Khomeini changed his mind
or decided to do something differently, that the people were there to stay.
People in the West don't appreciate
just how shocking this was not just to us, but even to people in Iran.