Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 02 Thousands of hard-line supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad converged on Monday at the site of the former American embassy in Tehran, chanting for the destruction of the United States, Britain, and Israel, in a state-organised demonstration held to commemorate the November 4, 1979 seizure of the embassy compound by radical Islamists.
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Nov. 02 Thousands of hard-line supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad converged on Monday at the site of the former American embassy in Tehran, chanting for the destruction of the United States, Britain, and Israel, in a state-organised demonstration held to commemorate the November 4, 1979 seizure of the embassy compound by radical Islamists.
A giant portrait of Ahmadinejad was brought to the demonstration with the words, Israel must be wiped off the map written below it – a quote from the Iranian presidents speech last week at a seminar entitled World Without Zionism, where he blasted the Middle East peace process and called for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Chants of Death to America, Death to Britain, and Death to Israel filled the air as protestors began to set alight the three countries flags.
In front of the former embassy wall, which has since been graffitied with the statue of liberty looking like a skeleton, the hard-line Islamists chanted Death to those oppose the Vali Faqih, a term used to describe Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
There were also calls in support of Iran re-launching its suspended nuclear enrichment, a process that could lead to the development of a nuclear bomb.
Several effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were burnt by protestors to chants of Down with the World Arrogance, or United States.
Mehdi Vahedi, a senior Bassij official, called on the radical Islamists to be ready to seize European embassies in Tehran if the EU continued to put pressure on Iran to halt its sensitive nuclear work. [The U.S. embassy seizure on”> November 4 was so successful that the Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini”> called it the second revolution. Irans student movement is ready to bring about the next revolution just like the previous one if it ever feels that the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is at threat.
A number of protestors, shouting slogans in support of Ahmadinejads stance vis-à-vis Israel and the Greater Middle East region, held up banners reading, America cannot do a damn thing!
