When Ghasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike on January 3, a wide range of speculations was made about Iran’s possible response. The Revolutionary Guards’ missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq on January 8 were apparently Iran’s major response in retaliation for Soleimani’s death. However, events that unfolded after Soleimani's assassination have laid the groundwork for the international media to review previous Tehran-Washington confrontations for which Iranian officials were supposed to take decisions about revenge on the United States.
One of the most significant episodes of this confrontation was the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus A300 on July 3, 1988 in the Persian Gulf, which took the lives of 290 passengers, mostly Iranians. Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from an American Navy cruiser, USS Vincennes. The United States government suggested that the crew of USS Vincennes had mistaken the targeted civilian plane with an Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighter.
Iranian Officials’ Response
The Iran Air Flight 655 episode was the deadliest incident in the history of Iran-US relations in terms of the Iranian citizens that had been killed by American forces. As a result, it was no surprise that after the downing of Iran Air Flight 655, all Iranian state-run media outlets sought revenge and many Islamic Republic officials vowed to retaliate by targeting US troops and interests.
However, in spite of propagandist rhetoric, the Islamic Republic was not in a position to take any retaliatory action: Iran was suffering continuous, unprecedented defeats against the Iraqi army that, since April 1988, had taken the offensive against Iranian troops. As a result, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not agree with his then-designated successor, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who proposed that the Leader declare jihad on the United States (Montazeri was later dismissed from his position after criticizing Khomeini’s order for the mass execution of political prisoners).
In response to Ayatollah Montazeri’s suggestion, the then-Leader emphasized that, in order to fight the US, all Iranian authorities must concentrate on defeating Iraq. “Nowadays we must try to make a significant change in all the fields that concern the war,” Khomeini said. “In order to wage war against the US and its proxies [Iraq] we must rush to the frontlines. Today... neglecting the war means betraying Islam and the Prophet Mohammad.”
In another statement, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the then-speaker of Iran’s parliament and the acting commander-in-chief of Iranian armed forces, announced that Iran would complain to the UN rather than retaliate against US troops. Rafsanjani asked the US government: “Have you really come [to the region] for maintaining security? Have you maintained security in the Persian Gulf?... We will wait and see how the UN Security Council reacts [to the attack].”
At the same time, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the deputy foreign minister of the time, who was in Vienna to negotiate war-related issues, suggested that Iran would not “seek revenge.” He added: “Iran aims to react in such a way that these incidents won’t happen again.”
In the end, two weeks after the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus, Tehran accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which called for an immediate ceasefire between Iran and Iraq. The resolution had been adopted by the Security Council on July 18, 1987, but Tehran hesitated to accept it until July 18, 1988, when Ayatollah Khomeini concluded that the Islamic Republic was not able to continue the war.
The reason for Ayatollah’s decision was Iran’s heavy defeats during the last months of the war, but Rafsanjani, in his July 18 press conference to announce the acceptance of Resolution 598, made a famous reference to the Iran Air Flight 655 episode. He stated: “Recently the Global Arrogance [the US] did its best to deprive us of a rapid victory at war, and if we insisted [to continue the war] we and the Iraqi people would have suffered major damages. An example of this [matter] was the Americans’ astonishing atrocity in shooting down an Iranian civilian plane.”
After the war, too, Iran did apparently not seek revenge for Iran Air Flight 655, and preferred to refer the case to the International Court of Justice. In 1996, Tehran and Washington reached a settlement over the Iran Air Flight 655 case. Based on this settlement, even though the US government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran, it agreed to pay US$13,103 per passenger in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims.
The Lockerbie Bombing
On December 21, 1988, five months after the USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian Airbus, Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. Killing 270 civilians, mostly American nationals, the bombing led to a joint investigation by the UK and US authorities and the issuance of arrest warrants for two Libyan citizens. For years Libya rejected its involvement in the bombing, but finally in 1999, under pressure resulting from tough international sanctions, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi handed over two men for trial in a Netherlands court. In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was found guilty and jailed for life. In 2003, Gaddafi even agreed to pay compensation to the families of the victims. This agreement was part of a series of requirements laid out by a UN resolution to lift the devastating economic sanctions on Libya. In August 2009, Scotland released al-Megrahi from prison after he was diagnosed with a fatal cancer. Al-Megrahi finally died in May 2012, still maintaining that he had no role in the Lockerbie bombing.
During all these years, there were a number of analysts and journalists who also believed that al-Meghrabi had not been involved in the bombing. After al-Megrahi’s death, some media even claimed that Iran, and not Libya, was behind the Lockerbie Bombing. They believed that the accusation of Libya was rooted in a US intelligence community policy decision taken in 1990 not to engage in a new conflict with Tehran. They suggested that the US-led coalition was on the verge of attacking Iraq and the American intelligence authorities needed Iran to cooperate or at least remain neutral in the upcoming conflict.
On March 11, 2014, Al Jazeera broadcast a documentary that claimed to have uncovered fresh evidence that Iran had ordered the Lockerbie bombing as a way of taking revenge for the Iran Air Flight 655 downing. Al Jazeera quoted a “classified” cable that reportedly indicated that Tehran had commissioned the Lockerbie bombing to a Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC).
The Al Jazeera documentary also quoted a former Iranian intelligence official, Abolghasem Mesbahi, who affirmed that Iran had been behind the Lockerbie bombing as a retaliatory measure. In 1997, Mesbahi’s testimony was referred to in the final verdict of a German court to establish the role of the Iranian government in the 1992 assassination of a several leading Kurdish opposition figures in Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.
It’s not still proven whether Iran had really had connections to the Lockerbie bombing or not. However, those who believe in this theory evoke it as an example of how Tehran might retaliate against its enemies, at the time and place of its choice.
Read other articles in this series:
The IRGC and the Iran-Iraq War (Part 1)
Decoding Iran’s Politics: The IRGC and the Iran-Iraq war (Part 2)
visit the accountability section
In this section of Iran Wire, you can contact the officials and launch your campaign for various problems
Interested in writing for IranWire?
Share your stories.
comments