Frozen In Time: Eerie Pictures Inside The 'Argo' U.S Embassy In Iran Reveal It Looks Exactly As It Did When Screaming Mob Held 52 Diplomats Hostage In 1979

• It was site of worst hostage crisis in US history when revolutionary students stormed in and took 52 staff hostage
• Of 90 people inside, six managed to escape and flee to other embassies, as dramatised in Oscar-winning film Argo
• The captured hostages were paraded around in front of cameras and kept in captivity for 444 days
• Today, the building is still the stage for demonstrations and the walls are covered with anti-US and Israeli murals

By Sarah Johnson

PUBLISHED:08:11 EST, 11 March 2013| UPDATED:12:47 EST, 11 March 2013
 

It was a symbol of U.S. supremacy that became a prison cell for 52 Americans. Now the hallways of the U.S embassy in Tehran, abandoned after it was stormed by a screaming mob during the 1979 hostage crisis, echo to nothing but the sound of soldiers’ training boots.

The rooms where secret state missions were planned have been covered in graffiti and pictures of Iranian revolutionaries have been casually propped against typewriters left behind by embassy workers.

But apart from the most minor of cosmetic changes, the building that caused a global diplomatic crisis is frozen in time – and looks almost identical to its portrayal in the Oscar-winning Ben Affleck movie Argo.

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The embassy garnered worldwide attention in November 1979 when revolutionary students stormed in and took dozens of US staff hostage.

Thousands of other protesters pressed around the compound, responding to a call by the country’s new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to attack US and Israeli interests.

Of the 90 people in the compound, six Americans managed to escape the building and flee to other embassies.

It was those six that inspired the film Argo directed by and starring Ben Affleck which spins the account of a joint Hollywood-CIA mission to spring the Americans from revolutionary Iran, using a fake movie production as a decoy.

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