By Mohammad Gharebag, KYODO NEWS - Nov 5, 2017 - 17:36 | World, All

Thousands of Iranians on Saturday attended anti-U.S. rallies all around the country to commemorate the 38th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

In the capital Tehran, thousands of students and citizens gathered in front of the former U.S. Embassy, which was closed following the hostage crisis. They chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," two slogans often heard at rallies in the country since the Islamic Revolution.

On the Iranian national calendar, Nov. 4 is marked as the "National Day of Combating International Imperialism" as well as "Students Day." Therefore, hundreds of students are each year brought to the venue of the event to attend the "Anti-Arrogance, Anti-U.S." campaign.

Demonstrators in Tehran set fire to effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump. The angry students also set fire to the flags of Israel and the United States.

Despite the annual display of hostility, one of the student leaders of the 1979 takeover told Kyodo News in Tehran last weekend that peace is achievable between Tehran and Washington if the two sides abandon hostile policies and commit themselves to joint principles.

"At the time, we were thinking that the takeover of the U.S. Embassy was the correct decision to prevent any foreign threat including U.S. interference in the process of the revolution, but keeping the hostages for longer than four to five days, which was the initial plan, was not an appropriate decision," Mohsen Mirdamadi said.

On Nov. 4, 1979, members of Islamic student unions of Tehran's major universities stormed and seized the U.S. Embassy as punishment for the U.S. government's decision to admit the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the United States for medical treatment.

The founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, called the takeover the "second revolution" and voiced support for the students repeatedly in his public speeches.

"U.S. diplomats were the symbols of arrogance for us, a country that backed the shah for decades. The embassy's occupation was the consequence of United States' wrong policies in the past," Mirdamadi added.

It was thought by the students that taking U.S. hostages would force the U.S. administration to deport the shah back to Iran, where he would be punished for his crimes. However, keeping U.S. hostages for 444 days served to create a four-decade-long crisis in bilateral relations.

"Once we took over the embassy, it changed to a 'national movement' and hundreds of people supported the students by gathering around the occupied embassy. After the intervention of revolutionary organizations, students lost control of situation and could not finish the takeover as it was planned," Mirdamadi said.

Mirdamadi, who was the leader of Iran's most powerful reformist political party and a former parliamentarian, thinks that the takeover belongs to the past that in 2017, both Iran and the Unites States should come together with an eye toward the future.

"Today, the world is changed. Iran is changed as well and we should make decisions based on new requirements. Iran and U.S. can have interactions. If both sides are committed to needed principles it is possible to restart dialog," he said.

Trump's policies are working against the chance of dialogue between Tehran and Washington, he said, and therefore "to have a better chance we should wait for a proper time after Trump's administration."

Speaking to Kyodo News this week, Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, who acted as the spokeswoman and translator of the revolutionary students in 1979, called the embassy takeover "a proper reaction to Washington's interventions in our domestic issues."

"I think that the students averted an imminent threat by taking over the U.S. Embassy and it was a right decision in the context of those days' conditions," she added.

"With the takeover, Iranians sent a strong message to the world that they will not allow intervention in their affairs and they will not allow a superpower to dictate their foreign policy," Ebtekar said.

U.S. foreign policy had been a "disgrace for humanity," she said, adding that U.S. politicians are "continuing an anti-human and interventionist foreign policy."

Ebtekar, who is today a prominent reformist politician advocating better relations with the West, said that the Islamic Republic is not "vulnerable" anymore but needs to strengthen its economy.

The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the final decision maker on foreign policy, on Thursday criticized the decades-long "hostile stance" of the United States toward Iran "since the victory of the revolution in 1979."

"Backing down against the Americans will make them pushy and brazen. Therefore, the only way is confrontation and resistance," the supreme leader's official website quoted him as saying to a gathering of students.

Speaking to Kyodo News, Reyhaneh Ahmadi, a 16-year-old high school student who attended Saturday's rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy, said Trump's latest remarks against Iran brought her and her friends to the event.

"Today, we are here to show the U.S. administration that we are not scared of their political stances. We love our country and we will defend it with the last drop of our blood," she said while carrying a poster with the slogan "Death to America."

Mehdi Fakhravar, a 17-year-old high school student in Tehran who was leading a group of school mates, said that their presence at the demonstration sends the message that they will follow the direction of the students who took over the embassy in 1979.

"We will not allow any intervention of the U.S. in our domestic affairs. We don't have a problem with the American people, but U.S. foreign policy is shameful," he said while carrying a poster of Trump bearing the message "Go to hell."