TEHRAN - Iranians on Wednesday held massive rallies across the country to mark the Aban 13 which mark the 36th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the Students Day, and the day that Phalavi regime forced Imam Khomenin to leave the country in 1963.

The marchers in Tehran gathered outside the building of the former U.S. embassy, now known as the “den of espionage,” chanting slogans against the United States.

Besides Tehran, people also took to the streets in other cities across the country to mark the event.

November 4 is also known as the Student Day in Iran, marking the National Day of Fight against Global Arrogance.

A group of Iranian university students took over the U.S. embassy in 1979, which they believed had turned into a center of espionage aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic in Iran following the country’s Islamic Revolution earlier in the year.

Documents found at the compound later corroborated claims by revolutionary students that the U.S. was using its Tehran embassy to hatch plots for the overthrow of the nascent Islamic establishment in Iran.

Fifty-two Americans from the embassy were held for 444 days until January 20, 1981.

Founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini later hailed the event as “a second revolution” with a greater significance than the original revolution of the Iranian nation.

Addressing marchers in Tehran, National Prosecutor General Ebrahim Ra’isi said, “The concrete example of global arrogance and Great Satan is criminal America.”

Ra’isi said the “den of espionage” (the former U.S. embassy) was seeking to restore the Phalavi regime but students realized this plot and shaped “the second revolution”.

He went on to say as the prosecutor general he wants to provide a legal case against the United States to outline the country’s crimes over the course of history.

For example, he said, the genocide of the Native Americans is a very big issue, noting that the natives’ complaints against the U.S. have gone unnoticed for many years.


He cited another example, saying the black people constitute about 11 percent of the U.S. population but half the prisoners in the country are black.

MD/P