'40 Wars in 40 Regions': IRGC Chief Condemns US Policies on Anniversary of Tehran Embassy Seizure

42 years ago, hundreds of armed students who backed the Iranian Revolution broke into the American Embassy in Tehran, which had been labelled a "spy den" by Ayatollah Khomeini. Since then, Iran commemorates this day as a day of victory over the US and as the "second revolution".

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief, Major General Hossein Salami, has slammed US global policies, accusing Washington of starting 40 major wars in 40 regions across the world on the day of the 42nd anniversary of the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran. Today, Iranians are holding countrywide demonstrations in commemoration of the storming the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979, chanting "down with the US".

Salami further stated that the US is guilty of over 200 interventions in the domestic affairs of other sovereign countries in the form of coups, sanctions, and military invasions. The IRGC chief summed up the US role in the world as a "factory producing dictators all over the world" in his speech at the event dedicated to the anniversary of the Tehran hostage crisis.

The Iranian general went on to say that over the decades since the seizure of the embassy, which Tehran 1979 had accused of trying to undermine the newly established government of the Islamic Republic, Iran has grown in power. This, Salami claims, has resulted in the Islamic Republic preventing Washington from dominating the Islamic world, as it had supposedly aspired to.

"Today we no longer see the US in the center of regional politics and the US allies in the region have lost their trust in the policy of that country".

The general went on to praise the most recent sign of Iran's strength – the successful liberation of Iranian oil by the IRGC after it was allegedly "stolen" in an operation by the US Navy.

"The Americans are used to constantly suffering defeats at the hands of the Iranian people, but of course, this has not yet become a lesson for them. The decline of the United States has begun, and on the contrary, we have increasingly been boosting political vitality and revolutionary enthusiasm and our establishment has been reaching higher levels of power day by day".

On 3 November, Iranian media reported that US warships were approaching an Iranian oil tanker and forcing it to unload its crude onto another vessel sailing under a Vietnamese flag, the Sothys.

The IRGC Navy responded to the incidents, catching up with the tanker and the US warships that were purportedly escorting it. Iranian forces boarded the Sothys and forced it to change course towards Iranian waters, where it reportedly transferred 700,000 barrels of oil, allegedly stolen from the Iranian ship. According to Tehran, a US destroyer and helicopter unsuccessfully tried to prevent the return of the crude to Iran.

The Pentagon disputes the accounts of the Iranian media, claiming the incident happened on 24 October and that the US never seized Iranian oil. The US Department of Defence's spokesman also insisted that the US warships were simply monitoring the unfolding events, but did not elaborate on why one of its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers was sailing so close to the Sothys, when everything unfolded.