The Shah Arrives in Cairo - the story destined to not have a happy ending, for a lot of reasons.
March 24, 1980 – The Shah Arrives In Cairo – Day 142 In Tehran: Dim and Cloudy – Hatred; Alive And Well.
March 24, 1980 – CBS World News Roundup – Walter Cronkite News and Comment – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
March 24, 1980 – A day not destined to have a happy ending, but unclear at the time just what those long-term affects would be. On this day the deposed Shah of Iran arrived in Cairo, met at the airport by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and welcomed to make Cairo his permanent home and to get medical treatment. The move further aggravated an already dismal situation in the almost non-existent talks to release the 50 Americans being held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran because America wasn’t willing to send the deposed Shah back to Iran in the first place, nor were they putting pressure on Panama where the Shah had been prior to his departure for Cairo. Calls by militants for stepped-up demonstrations by Iranians and intensified hatred towards America was making a bad situation worse. But so too, the move by Egypt to provide safe-haven for the Shah brought condemnation to Sadat and hints that some form of retribution by the Muslim community towards Anwar Sadat and Egypt was in the works. Reaction from Egypt was not concerned and was down-playing the threats.
From Tehran came word that the judge who presided over the trials of former Shah associates and military figures was also calling for spy trials of several Embassy hostages.
And while all that was going on, it was Day 27 for the diplomatic hostages being held in the Dominican Embassy in Bogota, Colombia and there were more negotiations going on for their release.
Seems like no shortage of work for hostage negotiators, this day in 1980 as told by Douglas Edwards and The World Tonight as well as commentary by Walter Cronkite.
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