Tehran - Thousands of Iranians burned US flags and chanted anti-American slogans outside the former US embassy in an official rally to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its seizure by militant Islamic radicals. Some 4,000 people gathered outside the hated "den of spies" to mark the "Day of Struggle Against Global Arrogance", an annual holiday commemorating the 1979 embassy hostage-taking which ruptured Iran-US relations.
The crowd, including students, members of the volunteer Basiji Islamic militia and officers in the elite Revolutionary Guards, cheered as home-made versions of the Stars and Stripes were ripped apart and burned.
Yelling the familiar revolutionary slogan "Death to America", protesters also set alight Israeli and British flags and pledged allegiance to a petition circulating in the crowd denouncing the US as "the enemy".
"We have given the United States enough time to apologise for everything it has done," a former Revolutionary Guards chief, Mr Mohsen Rezai, told demonstrators.