The New Yorker Radio Hour - Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

In 1979, as Christmas approached, the United States Embassy in Tehran held more than fifty American hostages, who had been seized when revolutionaries stormed the embassy. No one from the U.S. had been able to have contact with them. The Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., was the president of the National Council of Churches at the time, and when he received a telegram from the Revolutionary Council, inviting him to perform Christmas services for the hostages, he jumped at the opportunity. In America, “we had a public that was quite riled up,” Reverend Howard reminds his son, The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Adam Howard. “Who knows what might have resulted if this issue were not somehow addressed? . . . Might there be an American invasion, an attempt to rescue the hostages in a militaristic way?” Reverend Howard was aware that the gesture had some propaganda value to the Iranian militants, but he saw a chance to lower the tension. Accompanied by another Protestant minister and a Catholic bishop, Howard entered front-page headlines, travelling to Tehran and into the embassy. He gave the captives updates on the N.F.L. playoffs, and they prayed. It was a surreal experience to say the least. “It was in the Iranian hostage crisis that I understood how alone we are, and how powerless we are when other people take control,” Reverend Howard says. “And really it’s in that setting that one can develop faith.”This segment originally aired on December 15, 2023. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard, and I have a personal, sort of unusual holiday story to share with you today. It starts back in 1979. On the 22nd of December, which was a Saturday, your mother and I had been out grocery shopping, so when we returned, we found the telegram. I read the telegram aloud to her, and it said something like the Revolutionary Council of Iran is pleased to invite you to conduct Christmas services with the Americans in the U.S. Embassy.

That's the Reverend M. William Howard Jr. He received that telegram as the Iran hostage crisis was unfolding. Reverend Howard was a prominent minister at the time. the president of the National Council of Churches. He also happens to be my father. So when this came across your mail and you're reading it with mom, I mean, did you even hesitate for a minute, or did she raise any concerns or reservations about you going?

Well, as you know, I've done some pretty daring things in my younger days. One of the things she often said when I was given invitations to go to various places, like Syria or Guatemala, she would look at me and say, is this what you think you need to do? During the hostage crisis, revolutionaries in Iran invaded the embassy because of America's ties to the Shah. The Shah was the country's corrupt last monarch, and he'd been propped up largely by the CIA.

Now, by that point, the Shah was in the United States, receiving treatment for terminal cancer. The revolutionaries had vowed to occupy the embassy until, the U.S. sent him back, something that the United States was refusing to do. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students. The Americans inside have been taken prisoner. And according to a student spokesman, will be held as hostages until the deposed Shaw is returned from the United States. They had taken more than 50 hostages.

And my father got his invitation seven weeks into the crisis. Now, I wasn't even born yet. My older brother Matthew was two. Shortly after I received the telegram, it came on the news that American clergy had been invited. And they mentioned that William Sloan Coffin, who was leader of the Riverside Church in New York, and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Roman Church, were going to also go. My father and the other clergymen were asked to be there because of their reputations within their religious community. but they were also known to be progressive-minded people, which didn't hurt.

And we agreed to meet the following day at Riverside in New York. We met and we thought about, you know, the implications of this. We began to call around and speak with people who could give us some kind of orientation. We talked with then Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance. What was his perspective on what he thought was happening here? Frankly, they were delighted that we had been invited because up to this time, no American had been allowed to see

the Americans that were in captivity there at the embassy. So, of course, there was a lot of speculation, but no one had actually seen them. So we were in no way discouraged from doing this. It never really occurred to me, and this was a striking question, a surprising question I received for many people who presumed that there was a level of risk that we might be taken hostage. I was going to ask, I mean, was that a genuine fear that you had? No, I don't think either of us who traveled to Iran had that feeling. Why? Number one, we'd been in

invited. And number two, from the beginning, there was a sense of genuine respect for the religious heritage of the hostages. Unitary. I mean, there were people there who were orthodox. There were non-believers. But there was a presumption that they were Christian. And remember, the Iranian government was overwhelmingly Shiite Islam. Right. And they wanted to show respect for the Christian faith. Now, keep in mind that prior to that time, a lot of the public discourse, news media,

they referred to these people as communists. See, they were very devout Muslims from all that I could tell before and during this event. I do want to touch back on Matthew because he was about what, you know, my daughter's age almost at that time. I'm assuming he was far too young to understand any of what was happening, but, I mean, did you explain to him that you were going away? Were you concerned about, you know, his well-being while you were in this pretty scary situation? Well, yes, of course. And I'm not recalling the exact thing that mom and I said together, but remember.

Remember this is that Christmas and mom was responsible for assembling toys and things like that while I was away. She, you know, made me aware that she had quite a struggle getting him ready for Christmas. Right. But the interesting thing about this is that the Iranian hostage crisis was the breaking news all day, you see? And Matthew literally could watch his father on television. It didn't feel, I guess, to him that I was so far away. At this moment, there are 50 Americans who don't have freedom, who don't have joy, who don't have warmth,

who don't have their families with them. And there are 50 American families in this nation who also will not experience all the joys and the light and the happiness of Christ. How concerned were you about the fact that this was probably as much a PR move as it was sort of a genuine act of kindness? Well, let me just say, I think propaganda is always part of something like this. But on the other hand, we had a public that was quite riled up, who knows what might have resulted if this issue were not somehow addressed. In other words, might there be an American invasion, an attempt to rescue the hostages in a militaristic way?

And frankly, I saw this as an opportunity to reduce that possibility. And this thing just kept going on and on. And a lot of vigorous protests, I don't know if you would recall. or if you may have read about the yellow ribbons. Right, right. That thing, I think it was taken from a popular song. And there's a lot of T-shirts with the Ayatollah on it. Yes, yes, yes.

You know, mocking his name. A sacred part, the embassy. An embassy is a sacred part of any nation. That's what they invaded. The Ayatollah's condoning this, and we want them. As I recall, we went to the airport, J.FK. and it was evident that we were getting, I'm not sure who was giving us this assistance.

I thought maybe the airport authorities, because we were taken through a private entrance to the airport and held in a very lovely private lounge, not in the normal sort of place, until our flight left. It's like you enter, a situation, it's ordinary in some ways, but the gravity of it unfolds as you're in it. We arrived in Iran. We were escorted to the, I think, the Hilton Hotel, and we walked in the

door, and there must have been 200 or more press people. It was a circus. I mean, people from the United States, but from all over the world, wanting to meet these clergy who were about to go into the embassy. You know, I'm a Protestant clergyman. I'm thinking Christmas, that's tomorrow, because this was in the evening of Christmas Eve. And I had staff people accompany me, and some, one of them came to the door of the hotel and knocked on the door and said, Bill, you'd better get dressed. We have to be at the embassy at the strike of midnight. Yeah, the midnight mass.

And that's what the Muslim hosts knew about the Christian. So we dressed quickly and literally at midnight we were at the embassy driving to the embassy from the hotel. You talk about paparazzi. I mean, my Lord. You know, just speeding cars, reporters hanging out the window of cars with TV cameras. And you're wondering, is there going to be some kind of accident here? But we arrived at the embassy, and the moment we arrived, and we were expected. Yeah.

You know? I would hope so. That would have been awkward. Yeah, we didn't surprise them. Yeah, yeah. But the thing that, what happened at that point really became interesting, they blindfolded us. They at least give you a warning that they were going to do that. They explained to us why we were being blindfolded.

Sure. They weren't mean to us. Right. But we were completely at their mercy. My dad, the Reverend M. William Howard Jr., recalling his visit to the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. Our story continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard.

We're hearing a story today about the Christmas of 1979 when a young pastor traveled to Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis. At the time, the diplomatic staff of this U.S. embassy had been held by revolutionaries for about seven weeks. Their captivity would ultimately last 444 days. My father, Reverend M. William Howard Jr., received an invitation to Iran by telegram, along with another Protestant minister and the Catholic bishop of Detroit. That was December 22nd. Just two days later, Christmas Eve, the three clergymen were ushered into the embassy to meet the hostages.

They escorted us to a place, sat us down. Once we were inside, they removed the... blindfold. Now, each of us were taken to a different location. We didn't know where the other people were, our colleagues. I was brought to a large room, well lit, and there was a table there with sort of desserts, you know, like cookies and cakes and so forth. That was the Muslim understanding of how Christmas was celebrated. What was it like sugar cookies and things? I think it was sweet stuff. I don't know.

I didn't explore it because I didn't dare eat it. I didn't. Yeah. Was there a Christmas tree there and all that? Oh, yes. Yes. It was sort of like what the Shiites imagined, maybe what they had seen on TV.

Movies, you know. In walks a stream of people, obviously hostages. And some of them were wiping their eyes and looking around. And, of course, they're looking at me like, who the hell is this guy? They looked as if they had been kept in maybe a place not so bright. They didn't look disheveled or abused or anything. And so one of the students, and let me just say, the hostages were taken by and held by

university age students. And one of them said to the incoming people, This is Reverend Howard. He's going to conduct Christmas services. How did they take that? Oh, with a lot of reluctance, you might say suspicion. Like, who is this guy? And once, you know, they were all seated. I said, look, if I were in your situation, I would be suspicious of me too.

And I said, in so many words, look, I have a family. I'd rather be at home. But doggone it, I agreed to come over here because the nation is concerned about you. And then they began to warm up because I was not kidding around with them. You know, I said, look, if you don't want Christmas, we could just sit here until they come and get you. And then at some point, one or two of them would say, no, Reverend, we respect what you're doing? And, you know, what do you have planned? And I said to them, look, I don't know you're a religious affiliation, so I'm not going to come and impose my own religious tradition on you.

So you need to talk to me about what your needs are. And I remember very early in the conversation before anything that we might consider religious began to happen. They asked me about the NFL playoffs. That's a test if you're really in America. Yeah, are you really who you say you are, you know. So Denver will be moving on offense from their own 11 yard line. That punt covering some 33 yards, 843. That is the time remaining in the first quarter.

It is Denver, 7, Houston 3. And then, at some point, someone asked if I would offer a prayer. and we had a prayer you know the prayer was sort of a culmination of the conversation of acquaintance and it was a prayer

of contrition a prayer recognizing the need for the intervention of a divine spirit and so forth and so on but it was not long My colleague Bill Coffin was quite the musician,

and I learned later that he actually played the piano for the people he was with. There was a piano there, and they sang church hymns. I had no facility of that kind, but we did something that I think personally was quite affirming of the people. I said to them, if you have, as individuals, something you want to share with me of a personal nature and so forth, you know, sort of pastoral counseling, if you will. I'm going to sit here and you can come over, and there were a few people who came over. We talked about how they were being treated, and they wondered, for example, if there was a way for me to communicate with their families. And was there a way for us to

make an appeal for their release. And sure enough, on Christmas afternoon, a representation of our group went back to the embassy to pick up letters that were being written by the hostages, and they were subsequently delivered to the family members when we return. So that is essentially the first sort of link the family members had with their relatives who were being held captive. And then at some point the time ended, and they were escorted out of the room. My colleagues and I eventually wound up in a common room that felt like a basement to me. And the students who actually had invasional, at the embassy, taken the hostages, were there. And by the way, around the wall of this room

were very young men. They could have been teenagers, from all that I could tell, very much armed with semi-automatic rifles or automatic rifles standing around the wall of this little room. And that's when Dr. Koff had... said something to the effect, how many of these folk are you going to allow us to take home? Now, when he said this, had he given you and your colleagues

any warning that he was going to do this? Did he, did you think this is completely crazy what he's doing and dangerous? Well, I said right away, Bill is not that kind of situation. He was associating this with Vietnam. The Vietnamese were not driven by religion. These were people of real conviction about Islam.

There was a female leader of these students, and she was known in the American media as Mary. When she spoke to him very sternly, you heard the young men cocked their rifles, that kind of sound. And I said to him, Bill, you'd better leave that alone. And he backed down right away.

And after that experience, in that room, we also were taken to meet with the Mullahs. In the Shiite tradition, the clergy of Mullahs. Did you get a sense that anybody was trying to, I hate to use the word indoctrinate because that's so loaded, but trying to get you to be persuaded as to either the message of the captors or some other alternative perspective about what was going on to bring back to the United States?

No, but let me answer that in two ways. One, the students were always clear, not appearing to try and influence us, but they were very clear about the role of the U.S. in supporting the Shah, the presence of the U.S. in Iran, the role of the U.S. in Iran, the role of the U.S. in over the U. overthrowing Muhammad Mossadegh in the 1950s. They knew all of that in ways that most Americans did not. But when we went to visit the Mullahs after visiting the foreign ministry, there were so many checkpoints, armed checkpoints.

And it was evident at that point that we were going to visit the real power, not the government guy, but these clergy. And we were clergy. They were clergy. So we sat in this little room, I mean a little room. Like if a mullah was sitting here and I'm sitting here,

our knees were almost touching. And that was when they really poured out all of their suffering. Some of them were crying. They told us stories. I'll give you one really iconic story. about American teenagers riding motor scooters into the mosque at prayer time. And the leaders were unable to do anything about it because the Americans were so much influential of the Shaw

that the Shaw would not allow anything. untoward to happen to the Americans. So these kids could just disrespect and so forth. And they cried. They explained there was some guy there with one eye. And he told a story about how he lost his sight. The brutality of the Shaw. Now, we had some general knowledge of this,

but this was like detailing. Now, on the image and indoctrination, thing because many people in the United States were assuming that if you guys could get in there and see the hostages, you must be a little bit biased toward these folks. You know, that was going around. Yeah. And so what we decided, because we got some word that the Ayatollah was going to invite us for a conversation. And we had seen these conversations on the television. They're really more of him dictating to people. He's telling him. them things and you were sitting there quietly. We did not want to be in that situation. So we literally

planned our exit from the country in some forethought that this may transpire. So we were successful. And I'm sure he maybe would have used it for propaganda purposes. Oh yeah. Oh yes. It would have been on American television before you could imagine. So speaking of American television, when you came back, obviously there was quite a lot of press coverage, quite infamously in our family memories you appeared on the Donahue show. What are your memories of that in terms of what the reception was when you came back? It was virtually every major outlet. One thing I would say, especially the live shows, is how uninformed the people in those audiences were about the history of Iran. I'm tired of seeing my flag burned.

I'm tired of seeing hearing these people kill President Carter. I'm not saying to go in and militarily take them over. But I think that you better understand that we are tired of everywhere in this world that people that we have helped turning around and allowing them to destroy our flag, our self-image. Oh, wow. I mean, people were angry. They were uninformed. And when you put those two combinations together, man, that's a pretty dangerous combination.

I wonder, when you reflect back on this, what do you think about what took place? And did this experience in any way change your perspective on the holiday of Christmas? I'm from the school of religious thought that doubts whether, The average worshipper has fully understood the tradition that they claim. I think in this period we are seeing, for example, how devoid certain sectors of the American religious community is of basic Christian principles and ethics, how they behave in politics and so forth. I knew deeply the religious significance of Christmas, of course, but I knew that Christmas had evolved into, and it still is, an overwhelmingly commercial enterprise.

It's about giving gifts. So I understood that. But what I did understand in this experience was what it meant for the first, First time, really, and you know very well that I grew up in the Jim Crow South, where there were many instances of not necessarily knowing how much control you really had in your life because of external forces, meaning segregationist and so on. It was in the Iranian hostage crisis that I understood how alone we are and how powerless we are. are when other people take control. And really, it's in that setting that one can develop faith. If you think you have other options, you often don't turn to faith. When you have no other options, you turn to faith. That's my father, M. William Howard Jr., the former president of the National

Council of Churches. He went on to be active in the anti-apartheid movement, became president of the New York Theological Seminary, and grandfather to my two adorable daughters. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thank you for listening. David Remnick will be back next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards,

with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, and Alejandra Deccan. We had help this week from Aaron Dalton. And a special thanks in best holiday wishes to a few of our indispensable colleagues. Monica Rassick, Maggie Sheldon, Paul Mowkeley, Alicia Allen, Sydney Bevins,

Julie Cohen, Mike Barry, Chris Bannon, Ben Richardson, Bruce, Deon's, along with Fergus Macintosh and the heroic team of fact-checkers at the New Yorker. Victor Gwan is our art director, and Diego Molo created many of the illustrations on our website. Fabio Bertone provides legal review. Thanks to Rob Christensen, David Sikowsky, Stephen Gangaram, and the entire engineering team at WNYC. Kenya Young is the senior vice president at New York Public Radio. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.