| This set of documents focuses on United States policy towards Iran and events in Iran during the period of January 20, 1977, to January 29, 1980. This coincides with the period which encompasses the beginning of the Carter administration's relationship with the Shah of Iran through the failure of efforts to formulate a new policy toward Iran, symbolized by the seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the holding of its diplomatic personnel as hostages in late 1979. It covers the beginning of the popular protests and mass demonstrations that climaxed in the Iranian revolution of February 1979, a revolution which overthrew the pro-American monarch and established an Islamic Republic along the lines proposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who deeply resented American influence. It also covers the efforts by the U.S. and the Provisional government led by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan to normalize relations, which were frustrated by continual challenges from Islamic fundamentalists through such revolutionary organizations as the Revolutionary Council, the revolutionary courts and the komitehs. It records in detail the U.S. reaction to the constitutional assembly, which pitted secular against religious forces in a three-month struggle to draft a new constitution and which eventually led to the formal establishment of a theocracy and the loss of Iran as the principal strategic "pillar" of U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf. The onset of the hostage crisis marked the demise of the Provisional Government and of official U.S. efforts to come to terms with revolutionary Iran, which was now openly hostile to the U.S. |