Iran hostage crisis negotiations

Throughout 1980, Iran and the United States engaged in negotiations to end the Iran hostage crisis, which began in November 1979. Iranian demands most notably included the United States' extradition of Iran's former king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been overthrown by the Iranian Revolution before being granted asylum by the Carter administration for cancer treatment, though he would later succumb to his illness in Egypt; Pahlavi's asylum in the United States was cited as the reason for the siege of the country's embassy in Tehran, where 66 Americans were taken hostage, with 52 of them being held for the duration of the crisis. Algeria took on the role of mediating between Iran and the United States during these negotiations, initially dispatching ambassadors to simply relay each side's messages to the other, but eventually becoming more actively involved in resolution efforts. In January 1981, both countries' acceptance of proposals by the Algerian mediation team resulted in the signing of the Algiers Accords, by which Iran released all of the hostages. A detailed account of the hostage crisis and the Algiers Accords is found in American Hostages In Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis [Yale 1985], put together by the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations.