4. The Iran-Iraq War Changed the Conversation
In 1980, fearful that the Iranian Revolution would soon spread to the Shi’a majority population of Iraq, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. The United States supported him because anyone who was opposed to the Khomeini regime could become part of a proxy war between America and Iran. Iran had few international friends, and much of its foreign assets had been frozen. Khomeini had no money to fight a war that would last for nearly a decade and take almost one million Iranian lives. He knew that he now needed to use his bargaining chips, the American hostages, to try to get support for the war against Iraq.
The negotiations began to turn in favor of the efforts to release the hostages. An agreement was reached that Iran’s assets would be unfrozen in exchange for the safe return of all the hostages. Over three dozen times throughout the crisis, the president of Iran had attempted to negotiate with Khomeini to have the hostages sent back to the United States, but all of his efforts had failed. Now, however, with the necessity of obtaining the funds needed for fighting the war with Iraq, it looked as if the ayatollah might finally relent and allow the hostages to return home, to America.