Rallies were held nationwide on Tuesday to mark the 35th anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, which is also known as "Student Day".
In Tehran, demonstrators gathered outside the building of the former US embassy compound to commemorate the occasion, IRNA reported.
At the end of the gathering a statement was issued calling for the lifting of "cruel anti-Iran sanctions." The demonstrators also expressed their support for Iran's diplomacy in nuclear negotiations with the major powers.
On November 4, 1979, a group of university students stormed the American embassy building in Tehran and took fifty-two American nationals from the embassy as hostages.
The students believed the US mission had turned into a center of spying aimed at overthrowing the budding Islamic establishment following the victory of Islamic Revolution months earlier.
In 1980, then US president Jimmy Carter ordered a clandestine attempt to rescue the hostages but it failed leading to death of eight American special forces at a remote desert airstrip, southeast of Tehran. The hostages were later freed after 444 days just as incoming president Ronald Reagan was taking office.
The late Imam Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, later hailed the takeover as “a second revolution” with a greater significance.
