Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line

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Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line (fa:دانشجویان مسلمان پیرو خط امام), also translated as Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line^[1], was an Iranian student group that occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979. The students were supporters of the Islamic Revolution who occupied the embassy to show their support for Ayatollah Khomeini and their outrage that the ex-Shah of Iran was admitted to the United States for cancer treatment, instead of being returned to Iran for trial and execution. The occupation triggered the Iran hostage crisis where 52 American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days.

The organization was an group comprising students from several major science and technology universities of Tehran, including the University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, and Tehran Polytechnic.

Time reported in December of 1979 that there was "general agreement among Iranians and Western diplomatic sources that the 200 or so young men and women who are always inside the embassy compound are indeed legitimate students", although many Americans suspected otherwise. TIME explained that television images taken outside the embassy show "armed men ... in dark green fatigues" who "look more like combat soldiers", but identified these men as members of the Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.^[2]

Amongst the students were Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, who concocoted the original idea to seize the American embassy in September 1979, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Habibolah Bitaraf, and Masumeh Ebtekar who later became the head of the Environment Protection Organization of Iran during the administration of President Mohammad Khatami, and as of February 2007 was a city councilwoman elect of Tehran.

Their name refers to the Imam, that is, the leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was not informed^{[citation needed]} of the occupation of the embassy in advance, but later supported and confirmed the action.

The group found political identity and social reinforcement in the revolutionary atmosphere, and because of the embassy action, the overall position of the supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was strengthened in comparison with leftist groups.