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Recognize this building?

This is the former United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, where, on November 4, 1979, a band of Iranian militants, with tacit support from the revolutionary government under the Supreme Leader the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, overran the fences and walls around the embassy and captured the 66 Americans inside, holding 52 of them hostage for 444 days.  (Thirteen hostages, all women and blacks, were freed within a few weeks because Khomeini wanted to demonstrate respect for the female sex and also protest white racism.  A fourteenth hostage, Richard Queen, was freed early due to medical reasons that turned out to be the early stages of multiple sclerosis; he died in 2002.)  The building is now a militia post and a museum celebrating the glory of the Islamic Republic over the United States, still considered by the Iranian ruling elite as the abomination of the earth.  

I'm not here to rehash mistakes in American foreign policy toward pre-revolutionary Iran and its support for the Shah as an anti-Soviet bulwark in the Cold War, but instead I'm here to happily report that the 37 surviving hostages that endured the entire 444-day ordeal, along with the Richard Queen estate and the estates of the other fifteen ex-hostages who endured that long captivity and who have since passed on, are getting $4.4 million each in compensation for their imprisonment.  The money comes from fines levied against a foreign bank that violated sanctions against Iran and had to pay a hefty fine. The legislation that makes this possible also gives compensation to victims of other terrorist attacks, including 9/11.

For some hostages, this is welcome, but for others, it doesn't come close to repaying for their experience in captivity.  It's as good as they're ever going to get from anyone, as one of the provisions in the deal that got them released in the first place back in 1981 allowed Iran to get away with not paying compensation.  But it does show that, sooner or later, justice is eventually done.  

Two things to remember about the Iran hostage crisis:  First, none of our government's meddling in the affairs of a foreign country justifies anyone taking our citizens in said country hostage.  Second of all, let's not call it the "Iranian hostage crisis."  The hostages were not Iranian.  They were American.