Obama marks Iranian embassy siege

• Last Updated: November 04. 2009 1:17PM UAE / November 4. 2009 9:17AM GMT

Iran “must choose” whether to open the door to opportunity and prosperity, president Barack Obama said today in a statement marking 30 years since the storming of the US embassy in Tehran.

“We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for,” Mr Obama said.

“It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity and justice for its people.”

Radical Islamist students captured the city-centre US embassy on November 4 1979 — just months after the Islamic revolution toppled the US-backed shah.

The students, who took 52 American diplomats hostage and held them for 444 days, said they were responding to Washington’s refusal to hand over the deposed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Mr Obama paid tribute to the hostages and their families for “their extraordinary service and sacrifice.”

“This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust and confrontation,” he said.

“I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.”

The president stressed that Washington has “recognised Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community.

“We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people,” he added.

“We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”

Meanwhile police fired teargas during clashes with opposition supporters trying to stage a demonstration in central Tehran today and made several arrests, witnesses said.

The clashes took place in central Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir square where groups of opposition supporters had gathered for a protest, even as thousands of Iranians were staging an anti-American rally outside the closed US embassy to mark the 30th anniversary of the storming of the compound.

Witnesses said police beat the opposition supporters in a bid to break up the rally but the crowd of several hundred refused to move.

Opposition supporters have since June been staging protests in Tehran against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a presidential poll they claim was massively rigged.

Protesters on Wednesday chanted “Death to the dictator” while a pro-government group which had also gathered at the square chanted “Death to America.”

Riot police then moved in again, beating the opposition supporters who still refused to disperse.

Iran’s top dissident cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said today the capture of the US embassy was a mistake.

“The occupation of the American embassy at the start had the support of Iranian revolutionaries and the late Imam Khomeini and I supported it too,” he said.

“But considering the negative repercussions and the high sensitivity which was created among the American people and which still exists, it was not the right thing to do,” Ayatollah Montazeri said in a statement posted on his website.

“Principally an embassy is part of that country and occupying an embassy of a country which was not at war with us was like declaring a war against that country. It was not a correct thing,” he said.

“According to my information, those who did that now admit it was a mistake.”



* AFP