Tuesday 07 April 2026 5:55 am  |  Updated:  Monday 06 April 2026 11:10 am

On This Day in 1980: America severs diplomatic relations with Iran

By: Eliot Wilson

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The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980, after the Ayatollah Khomeini refused to order the release of the American hostages who had been held at the US Embassy since the previous November, writes Eliot Wilson

If you remember good relations between the United States and Iran, you are at least facing your half-century. The current armed conflict which began on 28 February seems less a shocking and violent crisis than a wearily plausible development that was a long time coming. But it was not always this way.

When newspapers became popular in Britain’s American colonies in the 1710s and 1720s, one of the most popular subjects was the insurrection waged by Mahmud Hotak against the tottering Safavid monarchy of Persia. The American newspapers generally rallied behind the easygoing Shah, Soltan Hoseyn, but – a prefiguring of the future? – he was forced to abdicate after the fall of Isfahan in 1722.

In 1883, 46-year-old Samuel WG Benjamin became the first United States Minister to Persia. On his first day in Tehran, he bought a 100-foot flagpole to fly Old Glory. Five years later, Shah Naser al-Din reciprocated by sending his own minister plenipotentiary, the aristocratic Hossein-Gholi Khan Noori. He was such a diplomatic success he was nicknamed “Hajji Washington”.

At that time, Tehran was deeply suspicious of Britain and Russia as they played out the Great Game in central Asia. Persia bordered British India to the south-east, Russia’s Caucasus viceroyalty to the north, and to the west the Ottoman vilayets of Van, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.

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