Thousands of Iranians gathered in the center of the capital Tehran and across the country on Sunday to celebrate the 45e anniversary of the hostage-taking at the United States embassy in 1979. In front of the former American diplomatic representation, they brandished Iranian and Palestinian flags as well as those of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah supported by the Islamic Republic. Many of them held signs with slogans “Death to America” et “Death to Israel” in Persian and English.
In front of the crowd in Tehran, General Hossein Salami, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, castigated the United States and its Israeli ally. Israelis and Americans “cannot survive by massacring Muslims, we always warn them that if they do not change their behavior, they will go towards collapse and destruction”he declared during a speech broadcast on television.
Since Saturday morning, state media have been broadcasting revolutionary anthems denouncing the « crimes » of the United States against Iran. Similar protests took place in many other cities across the country, including Shiraz (south), Abadan (southwest), Bandar-e Abbas (south) and Sari in the north.
On November 4, 1979, less than nine months after the overthrow of the last shah of Iran, a group of student supporters of the Islamic Revolution stormed the United States embassy in Tehran, accused of being a “nest of spies”. To free the hostages, they demanded that the United States extradite the shah so that he could be tried in Iran. The crisis did not end until 444 days later, after the death of the deposed sovereign in Egypt, with the release of 52 American diplomats. Washington subsequently severed diplomatic relations with Tehran, which have not been restored since.
