40 years on, Iranians recall 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis

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."
"I believed the US Embassy should have been closed down officially, but not through takeover," said Ghasem Rabiei, 49. "The US was opposing the Islamic Republic in many ways, so they should have been deported from our country, but peacefully and legally."
Reza Ghorbani, a 19-year-old engineering student at Tehran's Azad University, asked: "What is the result of this super long hostility? I do not say the US government is good, but these lengthy bitter relations have damaged Iran, too."