France24 November 04: Remembering the storming of the US embassy

Iranian militants stormed the embassy on Nov. 4, 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

US President Barack Obama, who has made diplomatic overtures towards Tehran since he came to power one year ago, urged Iran to look to the future rather than the past.

"We have heard for 30 years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for," he said.

Leading Iranian dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said meanwhile that 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," Montazeri said in a statement posted on his website.

Some leaders of the student militants who seized the US embassy shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, along with dozens of moderate political figures, have been imprisoned since the election in June.

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