THE LITTLE PEOPLE WHO NEVER GREW UP:

Gary Sick, an American official who dealt with the hostage crisis at the time, said the incident was "probably the single best explanation for why we're in the sort of impasse we are right now."

"If you look at everything Iran has done or we have done in the meantime, the kind of punishment that is being meted out to Iran is totally disproportionate," he told AFP in Washington. [...]

The 2015 accord had promised to open up Iran's economy to the world after years of isolation, in exchange for limits on its nuclear programme.

Its unravelling made some in Tehran see Washington as untrustworthy in negotiations -- but many young Iranians still see talks as the only way forward.

"I, like the rest of my generation, believe we have never had a problem with the American people," said Khadijeh, a 19-year-old student in Tehran.

The issue is with the US administration's consistently negative policies against Iran, she said, dressed in the long chador gown worn by conservative Iranian women.

"We have tried everything, whether it was fighting or peace... but (America) does not accept anything," she said.

Students who took part in the embassy takeover have voiced similar sentiments.

Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iran's vice president for women and family affairs, was a 20-year-old medical student at the time of the hostage crisis.

She became a key spokesperson for the students, thanks to her fluent English.

Despite her past, Ebtekar was a firm supporter of her government's efforts to rebuild ties with the West through the 2015 nuclear deal, she told AFP in a 2016 interview.

She said she regretted the isolation that followed, but remained unrepentant -- the students had been convinced the US was preparing a coup to reverse the revolution.

"The incident certainly had a cost, but the cost was less than its benefit," Ebtekar told KhabarOnline news agency last year.

Another then-student, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, who later became a reformist politician, in 2014 apologized for the hostage-taking.

"We just wanted to occupy the embassy for 48 hours, and I don't agree with sanctifying the move and thinking we should chant 'Death to America' forever," he said.

Over the decades, some politicians on both sides have wanted to move on, most notably Iran's former reformist president Mohammad Khatami and Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.

But the crisis scarred the US psyche. According to Sick, now a professor at Columbia University, that helps explain Washington's persistent hard line.

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