40 years on, Iranians recall 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis

On November 4, 1979, students overran the complex to demand Washington hand over an ousted ruler after he was admitted to a US hospital

It took 444 days for the crisis to end with the release of 52 Americans, but the US broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 and ties have been frozen ever since

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Iranian revolutionary students climb the US embassy's gate in Tehran in 1979. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:57pm, 1 Nov 2019Updated: 8:12pm, 1 Nov 2019

For those who were there, the memories are still fresh, 40 years after one of the defining events of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when protesters seized the US Embassy in Tehran and set off a 444-day hostage crisis.

The consequences of that crisis reverberate to this day.

Veteran Iranian photographer Kaveh Kazemi recalled snapping away with his camera as he stood behind the gate where the Iranian militant students would usher blindfolded American hostages to those gathered outside waving anti-American banners and calling for the extradition of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

“Sometimes they would bring a US flag and burn it, put it in flames and then throw it among the crowd,” said Kazemi, now 67, pointing to the spot. “They would come and chant ‘death to America,’ ‘death to the Shah’ … it changed the world as I knew it.”

Anger toward America had already been growing throughout 1979 as Iran’s revolutionary government took hold, but it boiled over in October when the United States took in the ailing Shah for medical treatment.