Iran Stages Mass Protest Marking US Embassy Takeover

Thousands of Iranians chanted "Death to America" as they staged Thursday a mass protest against the "Great Satan" to mark the 31st anniversary of the capture of the American embassy by Islamist students. On Thursday, waving Iranian flags and carrying anti-US banners alongside posters of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, the largely young crowd also shouted anti-Israel slogans outside the now closed US embassy. Banners saying "I will give my life for the leader (Sayyed Khamenei)" and another quoting Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Imam Ruhollah Khomeini as saying, "If you want to shout, shout at the US", were displayed at the embassy compound, an AFP correspondent reported. On Wednesday, Imam Khamenei praised the embassy takeover 31 years ago. "This event symbolizes the bravery and courage of the young revolutionary generation against the authority of America because taking over the den of espionage destabilized US power... and brought America to its knees," the Leader said in an address to students in the Iranian capital city of Tehran. "This fact should always remain in the historical memory of the Iranian nation, and especially the youth, that America never seeks ordinary relations with [other] countries… it seeks a master-servant relationship and the looting of the resources of [other] nations," Ayatollah Khamenei added. In November 1979 and in less than a year after the victory of the Islamic Revolution that toppled a US-backed monarchy, Iranian university students that called themselves "students following the line of Imam Khomeini" seized the US embassy in Tehran because it had become a center of espionage and planning to overthrow the newly institute Islamic Republic establishment in Iran. The November 4th has been labeled as a national day of resistance against global arrogance in Iran. Every year, the Iranian nation, particularly its students, hold rallies across the country to mark the day.