8. The Embassy Quickly Fell
Embassy staff put on flak jackets and helmets and began firing tear gas. However, the students were breaking through glass windows with their bare hands and using wet handkerchiefs to protect their mouths and noses from the tear gas. The attack happened so quickly and without warning that nobody within the embassy was able to take charge. The people inside promptly surrendered, and all the diplomats were taken hostage. The realization that this ordeal would not end soon slowly began to dawn on them.
Washington soon received word of what was happening, and leaders convened in the Situation Room below the White House. They opened phone lines with personnel inside the embassy in Tehran to try to get a grasp of the situation. However, one by one, the phone lines went dead as people inside the embassy lost their connection. By noon in Tehran, which was the middle of the night in Washington, DC, word got that the embassy had been seized. A total of 66 American diplomats were blindfolded by the leaders of the student group and led to a secure room within the embassy compound. They would not be seen for 444 days, and the Iranian hostage crisis would dominate the rest of the Carter presidency.