Thousands of young Iranians proclaimed "Death to America" on Sunday as they celebrated the 28th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy in Tehran by student radicals. A massive crowd, composed mainly of schoolchildren bussed in to central Tehran, gathered outside the site of the former US embassy, known locally as the "Den of Spies.""Death to America! Death to Israel!" the young people shouted, wearing bibs that depicted the burning of the US and Israeli flags.
Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, in a keynote address, hailed the embassy seizure as "a great and glorious event" from which Iranians were still drawing inspiration. But he also cautioned Iranians to cut down on consumption to deflect what he called the latest plot of Iran's arch enemy the United States — namely sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme. "We have to devise very clear plans so the pace of our progress is not stopped. All of us in our households can bring down our consumption expenditure by 10 percent. Our culture of consumption needs to be changed. We need to send a call to the young people," he said.
Pour Mohammadi described warnings of US military action against Iran as a "joke," but also called on Iranians to show "national solidarity" in order to defeat the plots. The interior minister gave the address after unexpectedly replacing former top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani who had been announced as the main speaker by official notices last week.