Post date: Nov 04, 2013 2:45:7 PM
On the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran thousands of protesters rally outside the compound, chanting "Death to America".
TEHRAN, IRAN (NOVEMBER 4, 2013) (TIMA) - Thousands of Iranians in Tehran chanted "Death to America" on Monday (November 4), the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy.
The protest was also a jab at Iran's moderate President Hassan Rouhani as he tries to ease tension with Washington and resolve the nuclear dispute.
The rally outside the former embassy complex is an annual rite in Iran. But this year it took on extra resonance as a barometer of hardline conservative opposition to Rouhani's diplomatic opening to the West after eight years of increasing confrontation under predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran has launched substantive talks with world powers on a peaceful resolution to the standoff over its nuclear programme, and Rouhani has won critical support from clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his conciliatory approach.
Large crowds stood around the embassy building, dubbed the "nest of spies" in the local press, holding up anti-U.S. placards and shouting "Death to America", a standard refrain since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The 1979 siege began when, ten months after the fall of the U.S.-allied shah, radical students stormed the embassy, taking hostage 52 staff for an eventual 444 days. There have been no U.S.-Iranian diplomatic relations since.
After 34 years of frozen mutual hostility, many Iranians applauded a short telephone conversation between Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama after the U.N. General Assembly in September, but it was met with suspicion by conservatives.
"With this 'down with the USA' we prove that we're standing by the oppressed and we will fight the foreign adversaries," said one protesting student.
"I love my country, I'm Iranian, I won't let any invader set foot in my country, I won't let them in," said another protester.
But on Sunday (November 3), Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's most powerful figure, delivered a strong public endorsement to current nuclear negotiators, an apparent warning to hardliners not to paint Rouhani as a pushover towards Tehran's old enemy.
Rouhani is pursuing a nuclear agreement with big powers to secure relief from increasingly crushing sanctions imposed over suspicions that Iran is using its nuclear energy programme to develop the means to produce atomic bombs. Tehran denies this.
The new mood of Iranian diplomacy has also brought into question the use of the slogan "Death toAmerica". While moderate figures have suggested it is time to drop the phrase, conservatives say it is more important than ever.