TEHRAN - Iran on Thursday has marked the 39th anniversary of a failed U.S. military operation to free its embassy staff held in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The military operation, which proved a fiasco for Washington, took place on April 25, 1980, when Jimmy Carter ruling the United States.

A sandstorm hit and brought down the group of U.S. military aircraft in the Tabas Desert, killing eight American servicemen and resulting in the failure of the mission. Inspections showed a helicopter crashed into a C-130 Hercules transport plane as five other choppers were stranded in the storm.

The units involved in the operation were from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Rouhani pointed to Washington’s repeated failures against Iran over the past four decades, saying the “historic U.S. failure” in Tabas was a “divine miracle.”

“The Tabas incident was a great miracle from God” which led to the failure of the Americans’ “complicated military plot,” he said, Press TV reported.

“Every day over the past 40 years, they (U.S. officials) have been hatching a new plot against the Iranian people, but they have always failed and will fail again,” he stressed.

Many believe the military failure played a major role in Carter’s defeat in the 1980 presidential election.

Iran commemorates the event every year as a symbol of the failure of U.S. plots against the Islamic Republic.

During the takeover of the embassy, documents were discovered that proved some of the American embassy staff had been working with U.S. intelligence agencies, meaning they were spies. Some 52 Americans were held in Tehran for 444 days, but later released unharmed.

In its newest brazen plot against Iran, the United States has designated the IRGC branch of the Iranian military as a terrorist organization and threatened to zero out Iran’s oil exports.

NA/PA