| Summary/Abstract |
The Iranian hostage crisis remains as one of the dominant memories from the presidency of Jimmy Carter. While scholars and journalists have devoted considerable attention to the administration's response to the crisis, no one has focused on the religious dimension of the hostage crisis. Drawing extensively on the archival records of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, this study argues that American and Iranian perceptions of the other's religion complicated a conflict already fraught with sacred symbolism. While the Iranians castigated Carter for insincerely professing his faith, the president's foreign policy advisors underestimated the role of religion in the new Iranian regime and how it might be used to bring the hostages home. The hostages finally came home when the United States negotiated with Iran's religious leaders and those leaders no longer had any political use for the hostages. Ultimately, this essay contributes to the relatively small literature analyzing the foreign relations of the Carter administration through a religious lens.
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