Iran Marks US Embassy Takeover Anniversary With Tehran Rallies, US and Israeli Flags Burned
Iran marked the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the United States embassy in Tehran on Wednesday with mass rallies in the capital. Officials used the occasion to hail what they called US and Israeli defeats in recent elections and on the battlefield.
On 4 November 1979, Iranian students stormed the US embassy, taking 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days. The crisis cemented the rupture between Tehran and Washington, which have had no formal diplomatic relations since.
This year's anniversary comes against the backdrop of a war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on 28 February. In that war, Iran's longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed, global energy markets were roiled and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted.
Thousands of demonstrators marched through central Tehran, burning US and Israeli flags and chanting 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel'.
Effigies and caricatures of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were paraded through the streets, including one showing Trump as a ferocious dog held on a leash by Netanyahu.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani told the crowd that the US and Israel had suffered a 'decisive defeat', including in Tuesday's US congressional midterm elections, which were considered a rebuke of Trump's Republican Party. Zakani claimed US weaknesses were the result of Iranian 'steadfastness and strength'.
Iran's judiciary chief, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, echoed the message in a post on X, saying: 'Trump failed both in war and in politics. We will certainly impose even more defeats upon him.'
