TEHRAN - On April 24, 1980, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the 52 American hostages held in Tehran ends with eight U.S. servicemen dead and no hostages rescued.

Then U.S. president Jimmy Carter ordered the military mission to free the hostages. During the operation, three of eight helicopters failed, crippling the crucial airborne plans. The mission was then canceled at the staging area in Iran, but during the withdrawal one of the retreating helicopters collided with one of six C-130 transport planes, killing eight soldiers and injuring five. 
The failure of the military operation, dubbed “Operation Eagle Claw”, is remembered as a fiasco among Iranians for the U.S. military. The incident happened in desert province of great Korassan, now part of South Korassan. Some call the incident a divine vengeance against the U.S.
The hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979, when a number of students angry over U.S. behavior toward the Islamic Revolution seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran.  The students said the embassy, called the espionage center, was engineering a coup in Iran to return the toppled regime of the shah.
Upon the order of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Revolution, non-U.S. hostages and female and minority Americans, were released. The remaining 52 captives remained in custody for the next 14 months.
Finally, in November 1980, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, U.S. agreed to stop interference in Iran’s internal affairs and Iran agreed to release the hostages after 444 days. 

PA/PA