International Mediation During the Siege of the Iranian Embassy vs. Egypt and Istrael Dispute

The aim of this essay is to compare two examples of international mediation and determine what were the strengths and weaknesses of the mediator/s in each case. The chosen cases that will be discussed in this paper are Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 with Algerian representatives as mediators between the United States and Iran, and the Camp David case with American president Jimmy Carter as a mediator between Egypt and Israel.

In 1979 the embassy of the United States in Tehran was attacked by a group of Iranian students who held the staff of the embassy as hostages. This event put a strain on Tehran-Washington diplomatic relations, which subsequently were completely cut. Therefore, Algeria was chosen as the official mediator, because it was already playing important role in “ non-existing” diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States. Not only the Algerians were familiar with the issue, but also the delegation consisted of four experienced and high-positioned professional negotiators. The siege of the embassy continued for 444 days, and ended on 20 January 1981 after successful mediation exhibited by Algerian representatives, all the hostages were finally released.

In contrast, the dispute between Egypt and Israel was ongoing for many years and there was no real urgency to solve issue. It was an initiative of newly elected President of the United States Jimmy Carter, who had a strong belief that the peace in the Middle East should be central objective of the US foreign policy, despite that he was warned about many previous failed attempts to find a solution for this issue.

Nevertheless, after thorough study of the subject Carter came up with an idea of a “just settlement”, which meant that Israel had to go back to th...

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...erent mediation approaches were exhibited by Jimmy Carter and Algerian representatives. Notwithstanding, both processes were successful, they did have their weaknesses.

However, it is important to note that “The success of mediation by no means depends solely on the efforts of the mediator, but rather on whether the parties to the dispute agree to the mediator's plan of resolution.” the two mediation cases are different , approach of mediators? had it not been a president of the USA (biggest ally of Israel) (footnote), probably the agreement would not be able to reach. Despite every weakness of Jimmy Carter’s mediation, the agreement was reached at Camp David and subsequently signed.obviously his strenght of mediation helped him to do so(money offers and threaths of failing). His main goal for the gathering was the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.