Guests of the Ayatollah : the first battle in America's war with militant Islam / Mark Bowden.

Guests of the Ayatollah : the first battle in America's war with militant Islam / Mark Bowden.

First edition.

0871139251
9780871139252

New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, [2006]

©2006

English

680 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

E183.8.I55 B68 2006

955.05/42

A chronicle of the Iran hostage crisis, America's first battle with militant Islam. 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 52 Americans hostage, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. Journalist Bowden tells the 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.--From publisher description.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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