With their faces hidden by masks, some 100 persons yesterday protested with speeches, chants and slogans the regime of the Shah of Iran, who this week is celebrating the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire.

While the Shah hosts world leaders at Persepolis, the city of the empire’s founder, Cyrus the Great, the protesters, who said they were Iranian students insisted that “a hungry nation does not need a 2,500-year celebration.”

The picture of an oppressive, murderous government presented at a press conference in the yard of George Washington University was different from that of American observers who have praised Iran as the success story of the Middle East and the Shah as a monarch who in a peaceful revolution — the “white revolution” — has brought stability and economic well-being to his people.

The Iranian Embassy later commented that the students were heedless of reforms in their country, including “land reform, suffrage for women, redistribution of income (and) the development of the Literacy and the Health Corps since 1963.”

The embassy contended that only about 50 Iranian students were present at the rally, which was followed by a chanting march to the embassy.

The students said they were wearing the masks to protect them from identification by the SAVAK, the Iranian secret police who, they asserted, are everywhere. The masks were lettered, “Political Repression in Iran — Shah is a U.S. Puppet.”

Besides talks from the event’s co-sponsors the Iranian Students Association and the Organization of Arab Students — and representatives of radical-left youth groups, the featured speakers were Richard Cottam, professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “Nationalism in Iran,” published in 1964, and journalist I. F. Stone.

Stone declared that what was really being celebrated this week was the 18th birth day of the control of Iran by the Central Intelligence Agency, not the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire.

In San Francisco, Iranian students yesterday shouted “Death to the Shah” outside their country’s consulate, wrecked by a bomb late Thursday night. No one was injured in the blast, which apparently was timed to coincide with the celebration at Persepolis.