Thousands gather in Tehran for anti-American rally

16 Nov The Telegraph

Iran saw its biggest anti-American rally in years as protesters in Tehran stomped on images of President Barack Obama to mark the 34th anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy and voice defiance of Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president.

The demonstration an annual event in Iran's revolutionary calendar was said to be bigger than usual as hard-liners mobilised tens of thousands of supporters to express opposition to Rouhani's efforts to establish rapprochement with Washington.

The gathering ostensibly celebrated the 1979-1981 siege of the former American embassy compound, one of the defining events of Iran's Islamic revolution, when radical students held 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days.

But the mass turnout also amounted to a challenge to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who said that no-one should undermine Rouhani's re-vamped negotiations with the West over Tehran's nuclear programme.

In an uncompromising display of hard-line sentiment, an Iranian pop singer sung a song called “Death to America” after the revolutionary slogan which Rouhani's supporters have proposed shelving while they seek an accommodation with the Obama administration.

Saeed Jalili, Iran's hawkish former nuclear negotiator who was defeated by Rouhani in June's presidential election, also addressed the crowd, according to local reports.

Rouhani, a comparatively moderate cleric, angered conservatives by accepting a phone call from Obama during his trip to New York in September to attend the UN general assembly. It was the first conversation between leaders of the two countries since diplomatic relations were severed following the Tehran embassy crisis.

Demonstrators expressed opposition to renewed ties by standing on the American flag while others carried banners bearing slogans like “We trample America under our feet” and “The US is the Great Satan”.

Obama was depicted in one image in a wrestling uniform wearing Star of David earrings to symbolise America's close alliance with Israel.

The images appeared to vindicate Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who forecast on Sunday that hardliners would gather en masse in an outpouring of anti-US and anti-Israel prejudice which, he said, would prove the need to continue international pressure over Iran's nuclear activities.

Rouhani's government is seeking the lifting of sweeping economic sanctions in exchange for concessions on Tehran's nuclear programme, which Israel views as a front to build an atomic bomb and as a threat to its existence.

In rally outside the former embassy compound, domestic resistance to the president's approach took the form of a model centrifuge held up by students carrying the slogan: “Result of resistance against sanctions: 18,000 active centrifuges in Iran.”

Another banner bore a quote from Ayatollah Khamenei: “The aim of sanctions is to make the Iranian nation desperate.”

Addressing supporters the supreme leader cautioned hard-liners against weakening Rouhani's policy of negotiations - even while admitting he was pessimistic about their chances of success.

“No one should consider our negotiators as compromisers,” he said. “They have a difficult mission and no one must weaken an official who is busy with work.”

But he also praised the storming of the American embassy, which Iranian revolutionaries have since derided as a “den of spies”.

“Thirty years ago, our young people called the US embassy a ‘den of spies.’ It means our young people were 30 years ahead of their time,” he said.