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The Political Influence Of The United States

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The political influence of the United States can be seen all around the globe, primarily through the presence of embassies in many foreign countries. The Iran hostage crisis occurred in 1979 when a United States embassy in Iran was taken over by a group of student protestors and the people inside were held hostage for 444 days. The United States’ responded politically by turning other nations against Iran, and economically by freezing Iran’s assets and limiting it’s ability to trade. The fallout from this incident can still be felt today and led to major changes in international policy, as well as media coverage.

Prior to the Iran hostage crisis, the United States was heavily involved in the affairs of the Middle East, as well as the rest of the world. After World War II, the United states became the de facto world police and were the leaders in monitoring global terrorism. In 1937, the League of Nations proposed a definition for terrorism as “All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.” This definition was used globally by the United States and other countries for a majority of the 20th century.

A major cause of the Iran hostage crisis can be tied to the United States involvement with Iranian politics in 1953 when they supported a military coup to give power to Shah Pahlavi. This coup was very successful and served as a model

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