Minister: U.S. Embassy Files to Go Into School Books

Date: 23 January 2023 - 21:49

News ID: ۱۱۱۶۸۴

TEHRAN – Iran’s education minister says parts of documents obtained during the U.S. embassy takeover in 1979 will be included in school textbooks as of next year.
Yousef Nouri said the move is done upon a call by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and the materials will be included in textbooks in all levels from the elementary school to the end of high school according to the level of understanding of the students.
He said that Ayatollah Khamenei urged the measure in a meeting with a group of students on November 2, 2022.
According to Fars news agency, after the occupation of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by revolutionary students, they “found documents there that showed American conspiracies against the Iranian nation,” adding that the data extracted from the documents are compiled in 70 to 80 volumes of books.
The Washington Post wrote in January 1982 that hundreds of highly sensitive documents were captured and reconstructed after the embassy takeover. There were other documents that reportedly have not been deciphered or have been withheld from the public.
The published documents, most of which have been authenticated by U.S. sources, detail U.S. estimates of the regime of the late shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the forces which toppled him and the struggle to preserve American influence in Iran.
An article by the New York Times on July 10, 1986, said the documents were published under the title “Documents From the Espionage Den”.
The books are sold openly in Tehran bookshops and include photocopies of the original telexes, mailgrams and typed letters from the embassy, classified reports, commentaries from the students, and their complete translations into Persian.
Among the papers were shredded secret documents pieced back together by the students that detailed attempts of the Central Intelligence Agency to recruit high-level Iranian officials, foreign journalists and diplomats as well as other CIA contacts either as paid or “unwitting” agents in the months after the revolution.
“The documents shed light on the CIA’s apparently unsuccessful attempt

to recruit the former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, in the months just before the embassy takeover, when he was a member of the ruling Revolutionary Council and head of the Central Bank,” said the article.

Some of the documents suggested that some of the members of the embassy’s staff had been working with the CIA. Later, the CIA confirmed its role and that of MI6 in Operation Ajax -- the 1953 Iranian coup d’état that overthrew Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddegh in favor of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.