As soon as you’re in the spotlight you’re standing out and confronting them; you are a big problem. Rage Against the Regime: Iran II, comment
You can’t force me to heaven if I don’t want to go. ibid.
Setting yourself on fire is actually easier than living in Iran as a woman. ibid.
8th March 1979 when women take to the streets because the Islamic Republic wants to to control their body. ibid.
Women in Iran are required to wear the hijab in public. Morality police are deployed to enforce the law. Anyone caught breaking it can be punished with a fine, prison or flogging. ibid.
The first ‘Girl of Revolution Street’, Vida Movahed, is charged with ‘promotion corruption and depravity’. She is fined an jailed. Over the following months, dozens of Iranian women repeat this act. Authorities make at least 39 arrests. The Supreme Leader describes the protesters’ cause as a ‘trivial issue’. ibid. caption
We gave our eyes for freedom. ibid.
Her name is Mahsa Amini, and she was just 22. She was arrested by the morality police in Tehran. ibid. BBC news
Eyewitnesses say she [Mahsa] was beaten up in the police van. ibid.
They started shooting people with shotguns. People were dying. ibid. comment
We’ve seen terrible things that will not be erased from our minds. ibid.
Iran, 1979: The worst hostage crisis in American history. Unknown to the world at the time, US embassy staff escape and find their way to the house of Canadian diplomats where they spend 85 days in hiding. CIA Declassified s1e7: Argo: The Secret Story
An extraordinary plan: to walk the diplomats out of Iran in broad daylight posing as a Hollywood film crew. The CIA now pushes its tradecraft to the limit as they set out to disguise and train six ordinary Americans in the art of escape. This is the real-life story of what would later become an Oscar-winning Hollywood sensation. ibid.
In late 1979 thousands of anti-American protesters in Iran are gathering outside the US embassy. Demonstrations against America are common. Iran is still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. ibid.
66 Americans are now being held hostage at gunpoint. At this stage the CIA have no idea that there’s a group of diplomats on the run. ibid.
The State Department is consumed by the ever worsening hostage crisis … The State Department turns to the CIA.
The Flash cables are about the escaped diplomats. ibid.
The Date for exfiltration: January 25th 1980. ibid.