Iranians gathered outside the former US embassy in Tehran to commemorate the hostage crisis in 1979, which shaped relations between Washington and Tehran for decades.
The Islamic revolution that toppled the Western-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, led by Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in November 1979 sparked the hostage crisis.
Khomeini-supporting students stormed the embassy and held 52 employees hostage for 444 days, demanding that Washington hand over Iran’s recently overthrown shah, who was receiving cancer treatment in the United States.
Midway through the crisis in 1980, Washington officially severed ties with Tehran, and those ties have remained frozen ever since.
“Death to America, death to Israel!” chanted Iranians outside the building, which is now a museum called the “Den of Spies” and is covered in striking murals that are against the United States.
The US and Israeli flags were destroyed by others.
Since 1979, Iranians have held the rallies annually.
Since the Gaza conflict broke out in October 2023, caused by the Palestinian Hamas militant group’s unprecedented attack on Israel, regional tensions have skyrocketed.
Since then, Israel, a US ally and Iran’s longtime foe, has gone to war in Lebanon with Hamas and Hezbollah, among other groups.
In response to Tehran’s attack on Israel on October 1, which was itself retaliation for the deaths of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander, Israel launched air strikes on military sites in Iran on October 26.
Iran has been warned by Israel not to respond to its attack.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, promised on Saturday to confront Israel and the United States with force in response to attacks on Iran and its allies.
In a speech to students in Tehran, Khamenei stated, “The enemies, both the USA and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response to what they are doing against Iran, the Iranian nation, and the resistance front.”
The event on Sunday took place a few days before the US elections, which pitted Democrat Kamala Harris against Republican Donald Trump.
