On november 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students took over the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 American diplomats hos- tage for 444 days. The hostage crisis consolidated Khomeini’s power within Iran, unifying competing political and religious groups against the perceived threat of US interference in Ira- nian affairs.10
Following the revolution and the hostage crisis, the apparent instability of Iran did not go unnoticed by other international actors. Eager to exploit an opportunity and regain access to the Shatt al-Arab waterway (lost in the 1975 Algiers Agree- ment with Iran), Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered his military forces to invade Iran in September 1980. The quick war Saddam had envisioned was an extraordinary miscal- culation; it lasted eight years, making the Iran-Iraq War the longest interstate conflict of the twentieth century—and one of the deadliest. Conservative estimates put the combined number of casualties at 367,000 dead (not including the more than 100,000 civilians killed in the conflict) and over 700,000 wounded, though the real numbers may be consid- erably higher.11
On november 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students took over the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 American diplomats hos- tage for 444 days. The hostage crisis consolidated Khomeini’s power within Iran, unifying competing political and religious groups against the perceived threat of US interference in Ira- nian affairs.10Following the revolution and the hostage crisis, the apparent instability of Iran did not go unnoticed by other international actors. Eager to exploit an opportunity and regain access to the Shatt al-Arab waterway (lost in the 1975 Algiers Agree- ment with Iran), Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered his military forces to invade Iran in September 1980. The quick war Saddam had envisioned was an extraordinary miscal- culation; it lasted eight years, making the Iran-Iraq War the longest interstate conflict of the twentieth century—and one of the deadliest. Conservative estimates put the combined number of casualties at 367,000 dead (not including the more than 100,000 civilians killed in the conflict) and over 700,000 wounded, though the real numbers may be consid- erably higher.11
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