Claims by the Iranian regime that it is the guardian of the Islamic Revolution have been laid bare.

For three decades, November 4 has been sacrosanct for a republic defined by its opposition to the “Great Satan” — the United States.

On that day 31 years ago, the Shah of Iran’s security forces attacked and killed student demonstrators on the Tehran University campus — an episode that sealed the fate of the Pahlavi dynasty. The same day, 30 years ago, Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran — a seminal event in the birth of the Republic.

Yesterday the regime had to bus in thousands of supporters to the annual state-sponsored America-bashing ceremony outside the former US Embassy, and to protect the area with a small army of security forces.

Elsewhere in the capital, tens of thousands of Iranians protested against the oppression — not of the US — but of their own government.

They were led by a new generation of students, but were clubbed and beaten by the regime’s security forces, just as their predecessors had been attacked by the Shah’s forces.

Some protested outside Russia’s Embassy, not America’s, because Moscow was one of the first governments to recognise President Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June.

Others chanted “Obama! Are you with us or against us?” — a reminder that the US President should not ignore Iran’s egregious human rights abuses in its quest to engage the regime on its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, many of the student leaders who stormed the US Embassy in 1979 are now prominent members of the opposition.

At least one of them, Mohsen Mirdamadi, is in prison, accused of conspiring against the state. None attended yesterday’s official ceremony.

Regrettably, however, this regime conspicuously lacks any sense of shame or embarrassment.

It is concerned only with its survival.

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