Thousands gather in Tehran for anti-American rally

[Shah-i-Kot]

Thousands gather in Tehran for anti-American rally - Telegraph


Thousands gather in Tehran for anti-American rally

The biggest anti-American gathering in Iran in years displayed domestic opposition to President Hassan Rouhani's policy of detente with the West











By Robert Tait, Middle East Correspondent

12:26PM GMT 04 Nov 2013


Iran saw its biggest anti-American rally in years on Monday as protesters in Tehran stomped on images of President Barack Obama to mark the 34th anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy and voice defiance of Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president.

The demonstration - an annual event in Iran's revolutionary calendar - was said to be bigger than usual as hard-liners mobilised tens of thousands of supporters to express opposition to Mr Rouhani's efforts to establish rapprochement with Washington.

The gathering ostensibly celebrated the 1979-1981 siege of the former American embassy compound, one of the defining events of Iran's Islamic revolution, when radical students held 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days.

But the mass turnout also amounted to a challenge to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who said on Sunday that no-one should undermine Mr Rouhani's re-vamped negotiations with the West over Tehran's nuclear programme.

In an uncompromising display of hard-line sentiment, an Iranian pop singer sung a song called "Death to America" after the revolutionary slogan which Mr Rouhani's supporters have proposed shelving while they seek an accommodation with the Obama administration.

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Saeed Jalili, Iran's hawkish former nuclear negotiator who was defeated by Mr Rouhani in June's presidential election, also addressed the crowd, according to local reports.
Mr Rouhani, a comparatively moderate cleric, angered conservatives by accepting a phone call from Mr Obama during his trip to New York in September to attend the UN general assembly. It was the first conversation between leaders of the two countries since diplomatic relations were severed following the Tehran embassy crisis.
Demonstrators expressed opposition to renewed ties by standing on the American flag while others carried banners bearing slogans like "We trample America under our feet" and "The US is the Great Satan". Mr Obama was depicted in one image in a wrestling uniform wearing Star of David earrings to symbolise America's close alliance with Israel.
The images appeared to vindicate Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who forecast on Sunday that hardliners would gather en masse in an outpouring of anti-US and anti-Israel prejudice which, he said, would prove the need to continue international pressure over Iran's nuclear activities.
Mr Rouhani's government is seeking the lifting of sweeping economic sanctions in exchange for concessions on Tehran's nuclear programme, which Israel views as a front to build an atomic bomb and as a threat to its existence.
In Monday's rally outside the former embassy compound, domestic resistance to the president's approach took the form of a model centrifuge held up by students carrying the slogan: "Result of resistance against sanctions: 18,000 active centrifuges in Iran."
Another banner bore a quote from Ayatollah Khamenei: "The aim of sanctions is to make the Iranian nation desperate."
Addressing supporters on Sunday, the supreme leader cautioned hard-liners against weakening Mr Rouhani's policy of negotiations - even while admitting he was pessimistic about their chances of success.
"No one should consider our negotiators as compromisers," he said. "They have a difficult mission and no one must weaken an official who is busy with work."
But he also praised the storming of the American embassy, which Iranian revolutionaries have since derided as a "den of spies".
"Thirty years ago, our young people called the US embassy a 'den of spies.' ... It means our young people were 30 years ahead of their time," he said.

[Shah-i-Kot]

Iranians cry 'death to America' in huge rally - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Iranians cry 'death to America' in huge rally




Tens of thousands rally outside old US embassy site in Tehran to mark the 34th anniversary of the US embassy siege.


Last Modified: 04 Nov 2013 14:35

Tens of thousands of demonstrators packed the streets outside the former US embassy in Tehran in the biggest anti-US rally in years, a show of support for hard-line opponents of President Hassan Rouhani's outreach to Washington.
Crowds of Iranians shouted "death to America" as they marked the 34th anniversary of the takeover of the city's US embassy, which led to 52 Americans being held hostage for months.
Protesters waved anti-US banners, chanting "death to America" and "death to Israel", while burning US and Israeli flags. Effigies of the US president, Barack Obama, his secretary of state John Kerry and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could be seen held aloft by protesters.
The protests were reported to be the biggest in years, with tens of thousands in attendance, and despite attempts by the US and Iran to thaw diplomatic relations after years of hostility.
Great Satan
Al Jazeera's Soraya Lennie, reporting from Tehran, said that the the opinion that the US was the "Great Satan" was hard to shift in some.
"A poll recently in Iran showed that most Iranians do favour renewed relations with the United States and a normalisation of ties, she said.
"But for the people here, and this small minority in Iran, their minds will not be changed. They still see the United States as the "Great Satan" and it appears as not much happening, diplomatically-speaking, that can change their minds."
Similar gatherings were reported in other cities across the Islamic republic, according to footage broadcast on state television, in what appeared to be some of the largest November 4 rallies in years.
Ties cut
The storming of the embassy on November 4, 1979 led to 52 Americans being held for 444 days, and to the severance of diplomatic ties with Washington and decades of hostility.
However, both states are attempting to renew their diplomatic efforts after the election of Rouhani, seen by many in the US as a moderate successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
On September 27, the US president, Barack Obama, spoke to Rouhani by telephone in the first direct talks between a US and Iranian leader since 1979.

[Shah-i-Kot]

Mistrust of US still deep in Iran - Al Jazeera Blogs


Mistrust of US still deep in Iran

Thirty-four years after siege of US embassy in Tehran, there is still seething anger towards the United States.

Last modified: 5 Nov 2013 00:12

Soraya Lennie


Soraya Lennie is an Al Jazeera reporter based in Tehran.

Rahele, whose brother was killed in the Iran-Iraq war, says she will never forgive the US [Al Jazeera] The former US embassy in Tehran is stuck in time. Forever a sprawling symbol of the daring that embodied the takeover of the embassy 34 years ago and the subsequent hostage crisis that destroyed Iranian–US ties. A monument to another time – and a monument to the day everything changed forever between two nations. Its roof is rusty, its walls chipped and aging. Anti-US slogans are stamped along the compound in downtown Tehran. Still, it’s quite the sight.
Thousands came to rally, to chant "death to America" and pro-revolutionary slogans on this year's anniversary. The rest of Iran stayed away. Among the crowds were students, bussed in for the annual excursion. They are far too young to remember anything that happened in 1979 and many were happy to be there just because they weren’t in school. Others had hastily scrawled "Death to America" and "Long live the Supreme Leader" on their hands in pen.
Thirty-four years later many question why the embassy takeover is important - why any Iranian should celebrate a day, which many analysts argue, inevitably and indirectly lead Iran to its current global isolation and closer to economic ruin.
But under the signs and slogans, the propaganda, there is still seething anger towards the United States. Anger that these Iranians will never reckon with. And there is nothing the United States can do to make it go away.
This year, however, there is renewed optimism that the US and Iran will finally find each other on the same path; that these two nations can finally move forward and resume diplomatic ties.
From Iran’s point of view – not just the government but the people, too – the US is responsible for a long list of crimes against the Iranian people, from backing coups, creating the Shah’s savage secret police, SAVAK, to aiding the enemy, Iraq, during eight years of bloody war.
What’s worse is that the US, according to these Iranians, has never shown an inch of remorse for anything it’s done – including shooting down Iran Air flight 655 in 1988. The USS Vincennes incorrectly identified the civilian airliner as a military jet near the Iranian Island of Qeshm, shooting it down and killing all 290 people on board.
Many of those at the rally held up signs of the plane, and that fateful number, 655, to make this point.
Hamid Moayyedi, one of the protesters, said the US has a lot to be sorry for.
"I will never support relations with the US; they cannot be trusted at all. You can’t even find one case when they were honest. They have committed so many crimes, how we can forget them? Their nature is criminal and cruel," he said.
"If they want to do something they should compensate all our damages, spiritually and physically, if they really want to prove that they are honest. But they can’t, so Iranians will never forgive them and I myself will just be happy when they are completely destroyed."
Another protester shared that sentiment. "I do not support ties with the US; a wolf cannot change its behaviour. The US pretends it wants to be friends but behind the scenes it is different so I don't agree with ties and I cannot forgive them. It’s not only me, no Iranian can forget what they have done to us," said Hamid Reza.
Draped along the embassy walls were also pictures from the Iran Iraq war – an unforgivable crime if ever there was one in Iran. The US supported Iraq’s invasion, armed Saddam Hussein’s government and according to both the United Nations and former US diplomats, at the very least, turned a blind eye when Saddam used chemical weapons against both the Iranian army and civilians.
Rahele, who held up an anti-US poster throughout the rally, has personal reasons for her hatred.
"We don’t really think they will ever apologise to us ... The US will never end animosity towards our nation, because they are the enemy of our beliefs ... Anyway, we don’t need their apologies. My brother was killed in the war and the US was backing Iraq. So I myself will never forgive them because of the crimes they committed against us.”
A recent poll in Iran shows that the majority of Iranians, close to 80 percent, support the normalisation of relations with the US. But that doesn’t mean, just like those at the rally, they are willing to forget anything. They’re not. Scars here are far too deep to be swept away in a sea of goodwill and optimism. For years, getting to the negotiating table was always seen as the challenge, but perhaps forgetting the past has been the biggest one all along.