How The United States Got More Than Even With Iran Over The Hostage Crisis.

The Iranian hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979. Radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held captive 52 U.S. hostages until January 20th, 1981, which was the day that President Reagan was sworn into office for his first term. Ever since that crisis there are some Americans that seen unaware of exactly how the U.S. went about punishing the Iranians for their actions. Briefly, here is how The U.S. did it.
The U.S. reacted to the crisis by freezing billions of dollars of Iranian assets that resided in western banks. The executive order was signed by President Jimmy Carter days after the start of the crisis. That was the American first step. These assets total about 12 billion dollars today and are only now about to be released finally to the Iranian government but not all in one big piece at the same time.
The U.S. has denied these funds to Iran for 37 years and it is money than Iran could desperately use.
The second, and certainly more damaging, reaction that the U.S. had was to support Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. The Iran-Iraq war began in September of 1980, less than a year after the Hostage crisis began, and lasted until August of 1988. During the conflict The United States supported the war efforts of Saddam Hussein and the results for Iran were harsh. Some estimates place the number of Iranian war dead at anywhere between 400,000 to 800,000 but I have seen estimates that claim the number to be over 1 million. These estimates are just war dead and do not include the additional hundreds of thousands that were wounded.
As far as economic losses for Iran related to the war, most estimates place that number at or around 600 billion. Some other estimates place it even higher.
Some Americans have lamented for decades about the Iranian hostage crisis believing that Iran got the better of the U.S. and that we never properly responded to Iran or ever "Got Even" with them for what it was that they did. The truth is The U.S. got more than even with Iran over the hostage crisis many moons ago.