Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 03 Iran announced on Friday that on Saturday it would mark the anniversary of the November 4, 1979 United States embassy seizure by hard-liners in Tehran with a demonstration outside the former den of spies.
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Nov. 03 Iran announced on Friday that on Saturday it would mark the anniversary of the November 4, 1979 United States embassy seizure by hard-liners in Tehran with a demonstration outside the former den of spies.
State television said that a rally would be held outside the former U.S. embassy compound, which has since been transformed into a military outpost belonging to the Revolutionary Guards.
The rally will begin at 10 am on Saturday.
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students led by a close confidante of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive. Fifty two of the embassy staff members were held captive for 444 days. The incident triggered the most profound crisis of the Carter presidency. Many of the hostage-takers went on to become major political figures in Iran in subsequent years.
Last year, the White House accused hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a leader of the student movement that organised the embassy takeover.
In addition to his role in the 1979 hostage crisis, Ahmadinejad has also been implicated in the assassination of a Kurdish dissident in Vienna in 1989. He is believed to have been in the hit squad that coordinated and carried out the attack.
