Factbox: The storming of the US embassy in Tehran
Agence France-Presse | 11/04/2009 9:13 PM
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TEHRAN - On a chilly morning on November 4, 1979, Islamist students in the newly created Islamic republic of Iran stormed the US embassy in the heart of Tehran, taking 52 diplomats and embassy staff hostage.
The students said their assault on "the Great Satan's" compound was sparked by Washington's refusal to hand over the deposed shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whom they feared could stage a comeback with American support.
Their fears, they said, stemmed from a CIA-backed coup in 1953 which saw the overthrow of Iran's nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
The takeover of the embassy was wildly cheered by Iranians at the time, who were everywhere to be heard chanting "Death to America."
The founder of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, went as far as to dub it the "second revolution."
Many attribute the failure of Jimmy Carter, who was Democratic US president from 1977 to 1981, to win a second term in office to his mismanagement of the hostage crisis.
A rescue operation he authorised saw two aircraft crashing, killing eight American servicemen.
The diplomats and embassy staff were released only in January 1981, after 444 days in captivity, soon after Republican Ronald Reagan took office.
Washington officially broke off diplomatic relations during the crisis, a rupture that has yet to be healed.
Iran still lauds the seizure as a revolutionary act while Washington condemns it as an abuse of human rights.
Massoumeh Ebtekar, who became spokeswoman for the students and was known in the West as the "screaming lady," said in a book on the embassy takeover that the aim was to tell the United States that the Islamic revolution had been an entirely democratic event.
Iranian state television regularly shows footage of the students parading their US captives blindfolded around the compound, while burning the American flag.
It also shows footage of the hostages looking healthy and well-fed, indicating they had not been mistreated by their captors.
The storming of the embassy, known locally as the "Den of Spies," is marked by an anti-US rally annually, with thousands turning out to listen to a keynote speaker designated by the government.
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