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By Parisa Hafezi
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iranians chanting "Death to America" rallied Sunday to mark the anniversary of the seizure of the American embbady during the 1979 Islamic revolution and the imminent reimposition of sanctions Americans on the key oil sector of Iran.
Thousands of students taking part in a government rally in Tehran, broadcast live on national television, burned Stars and Stripes, an Uncle Sam effigy, and photos of President Donald Trump outside the green complex of downtown formerly housing the American mission.
Hardline students stormed the embbady on November 4, 1979, shortly after the fall of the US-backed Shah, and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. The two countries have always been enemies on both sides of the Middle East conflict.
The Iranian media said that millions of people had gathered in rallies in most cities of the country, swearing allegiance to the ruling clbad and its supreme authority, the supreme leader, the Ayatollah, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The participation figure could not be independently confirmed by Reuters.
Meetings filled with songs "Death to America" take place every year on the occasion of the takeover of the embbady by the embbady. But the US-Iranian rancor is particularly strong this time after Trump's decision in May to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal reached between the world powers and Iran in 2015 and the US. impose new sanctions on Tehran.
The deal resulted in the lifting of most of the international financial and economic sanctions imposed on Iran in exchange for Tehran's reduction of its disputed nuclear activity under UN surveillance.
The reinstatement of US sanctions on Iran's oil and gas sectors on Monday is part of a larger Trump effort to force Tehran to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and support for alternative forces in conflict. in the Middle-East.
The commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian generals, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said at the rally in Tehran that Iran would resist and defeat an American "psychological war" and the return of US sanctions, intended to paralyze the oil exports and financial institutions of the Islamic Republic.
"America has unleashed economic and psychological warfare as a last resort … But America's plots and sanctions plans will be defeated through continued resistance," Jafari said.
In a speech on Saturday, Khamenei said Trump's policy was facing opposition around the world. "America's goal was to restore its dominance (before 1979) but it failed." America has been defeated by the Islamic Republic over the last 40 years ", has it? he declares.
(Writing of Parisa Hafezi with additional reports in the press room of Dubai, edition of Mark Heinrich)
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