Iranians Still Hate Us Lots- Largest Protest Ever On Anniversary Of 1979 US Embassy Takeover

Today was the anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy takeover in Tehran (the highlight of the Iranian revolution) and as they have done every year since, Iranians took to the streets with anti-U.S. placards to show just how much they still hate the "Great Satan".  Protesting in front of the former U.S. Embassy, the largest crowd ever gathered at these annual US bashing demonstrations burned American and Israeli flags, carried effigies of Barack Obama and John Kerry, and shouted "Death To America."  All this in spite of the fact that current President Hassan Rohani is trying to reach out, sort of, to the U.S. and the West, with the blessing, sort of, of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini.

Some of the more moderate elements in Iran asked that the "Death To America" chants be dropped, but hard-liners refused,

...including commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), [who] have rejected those calls and said that the habitual refrain of "Death to America" will remain eternal.

Though Rohani did not attend the rallies taking place in other cities besides Tehran, Said Jalili was there.

Among the main speakers at the rally were former senior nuclear negotiator and defeated presidential candidate, hard-liner Said Jalili, who said the capture of the U.S. Embassy, called "the nest of spies" by some officials, showed that the revolution was on the right path.

Jalili defended the "Death to America" slogan as the slogan of the most "thoughtful and honest" Iranians and added the slogan was not directed against the American people but against its government officials.

He also said that Iranians monolithically support the clerical establishment, the government, and the team in charge of nuclear negotiations.

Video of the protests on Washington Times.
Photos and twitter comments on BuzzFeed.

Still so  many haters out there.

Iranian Dissident Speaks At 2013 Geneva Summit For Human Rights About Her Torture

Powerful speech by former Iranian political prisoner and torture victim Marina Nemat at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, on February 19, 2013.  Born in 1965, she talks about her harrowing experience as a young Christian girl living in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

She tells of how the overwhelming majority of Iranians voted for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his Islamic Republic because he promised freedom and democracy.  We all know how that turned out.  Starting in 1980 young people began demonstrating, and in 1981 the mass arrests began. Nemat also took  to the streets joining many other teenagers (some as young as 14), to protest against the Islamic Republic "because it did not deliver the freedoms that it had promised." Arrested in 1982, at the age of 16, she was taken to the notorious Evin prison where she was interrogated, tortured, and eventually sentenced to death. She remained there for two years, 2 months and 12 days. The only reason she was spared death was because one of her interrogators took a fancy to her and forced her to convert and marry him after threatening to arrest her parents.

It's only gotten worse.

Ayatollah Khomeini Said No Compulsory Hijab In 1979

Many political figures make promises they don't keep, not because they can't but because oftentimes they have other ulterior motives and intentions. Fidel Castro came into power as a Socialist, and once he was firmly ensconced in the leadership of Cuba he revealed himself as a Communist. The same thing happened in Iran over 30 years ago, only this time it wasn't Communism but Islamism, and all the things that the Ayatollah Khomeini promised not to do, like force women to wear the hijab, were eventually instituted a few years after he took control.

This was on a secular Iranian's Facebook page:

Thirty years ago “Khomeini” claimed that everything is going to be free of charge from public transportation to tap water if an Islamic state establishes. He promised freedom of speech and assured that Hijab is not mandatory (see picture).

He, the trustee of people, gained the ruling power of the country and within the very first years of revolution many were made to migrate from Iran, many were arrested and many were executed. The executions reached its peak at 1988, not even a decade after establishment of a totalitarian state under Islam’s name.


A thirty years later people queued desperately at polling places (even outside Iran) to cast their votes with slightest glimmer of hope to elect a new president who made the promise of “Freedom”. The elections led to bloody clashes between people and security guards, police and Basidj paramilitary forces. A large number of opponents of the regime including many students had to leave the country and seek safety abroad. Those arrested faced harsh prison times, torture and even cases of sexual abuse were reported.

You'd think the people in those countries that voted for Islamists after the Arab Revolution would have looked to Iran to see what happened after they helped vote religious fundamentalists into power. It doesn't bode well for them, but it was their choice.