12 Volatile Years in the Middle East

Nov. 4, 1979: Islamic militants seize U.S. Embassy in Iran, take 66 hostages.

April 25, 1980: U.S. attempt to rescue hostages, Desert One, fails when three helicopters malfunction, crash at rendezvous kills eight.

Sept. 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran. Their war ended August, 1988.

Jan. 20, 1981: Iran hostages released after 444 days’ captivity on President Reagan’s inaugural day.

Aug. 20, 1982: Reagan orders 800 Marines to land in Beirut along with French and Italian soldiers to supervise PLO-Syrian evacuation of Beirut.

Sept. 16-18, 1982: Christian militiamen storm two Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut, slaughtering hundreds of people.

Oct. 23, 1983: Islamic Jihad suicide bombers hit U.S. and French military facilities in Beirut, killing 241 Americans and 58 French.

Dec. 14, 1983: Battleship New Jersey opens fire on pro-Syrian positions in the hills east of Beirut.

March 7, 1984: The first U.S. hostage seized in Lebanon, CNN correspondent Jeremy Levin, is kidnaped in Beirut. He is allowed to escape after 11 months.

Sept. 14, 1985: Rev. Benjamin Weir (seized May 8, 1984) is released.

Oct. 4, 1985: Islamic Jihad reports it has killed William Buckley, a U.S. Embassy political officer and CIA Beirut station chief, who had been kidnaped March, 16, 1984.

April 17, 1986: American hostage Peter Kilburn (last seen Dec. 3, 1984) is found dead in retaliation for U.S. bombing of Libya. British hostages John Leigh Douglas and Philip R. Padfield (both taken March 28, 1986) also found murdered. British hostage Alec Collett (taken March 25, 1985) is reported executed April 23.

July 26, 1986: Father Lawrence M. Jenco (seized Jan. 8, 1985) is released.

Nov. 2, 1986: David P. Jacobsen of Huntington Beach, Calif. (seized May 28, 1985), is freed. Two days later, a pro-Syrian magazine in Beirut reveals that National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane had flown to Iran that May on a clandestine arms-for-hostages mission, the first disclosure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Jan. 20, 1987: Anglican Church mediator Terry Waite is kidnaped while on a mission to free other hostages.

July 28, 1989: Israeli commandos kidnap Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a leader of Hezbollah, at his home in southern Lebanon. Three days later, the reprisal execution is reported of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins (seized Feb. 17, 1988), American commander of U.N. truce forces in Lebanon.

April 22, 1990: American Robert Polhill, abducted Jan. 24, 1987, is freed by captors.

April 30, 1990: Frank H. Reed is freed in West Beirut. He says he spent part of his nearly four years as a prisoner with U.S. hostages Terry A. Anderson (seized March 16, 1985) and Thomas Sutherland (June 9, 1985) and Britons John McCarthy (April 17, 1986) and Brian Keenan (seized April 11, 1986, released Aug. 24, 1990).

Aug. 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, then releases many imprisoned Shiite terrorists Islamic Jihad had sought to free.

Aug. 8, 1990: “Palestinian Revolutionary Squads” release two Swiss Red Cross workers kidnaped in Sidon on Oct. 6, 1989.

Jan. 8, 1991: Belgian couple and two children, held three years in Lebanon, are freed after Belgian government commutes sentence of Palestinian terrorist.

Jan. 16, 1991: U.S. and coalition air forces attack Iraq; ground assault begins Feb. 23; Iraqi forces expelled from Kuwait in four days; Bush announces cease-fire Feb. 27.

Aug. 8, 1991: Briton John McCarthy is freed by Islamic Jihad. But French medical worker Jerome Leyraud is kidnaped in Beirut by the Organization for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights.

Aug. 11, 1991: Leyraud is released by his captors. Hours later, American Edward A. Tracy is set free by the Revolutionary Justice Organization and turned over to U.S. officials in Damascus, Syria.