Tehran Assails Navy Attack as a ‘Massacre’

Iran accused the United States of provoking Sunday’s military confrontation in the Persian Gulf and called for international condemnation of Washington’s “capital crime” of shooting down an Iranian civilian airliner.

The incident shows that the United States has “entered a more direct war with our nation,” Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi declared, according to a dispatch received in Nicosia from IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.

‘Abhorrence of Washington’

Moussavi warned that this “latest crime against the Iranian people would only further arouse the abhorrence of (Iranians) against Washington.”

In a similar vein, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati declared: “The United States is responsible for the consequences of its barbaric massacre of innocent passengers.”

IRNA’s report did not say what actions Iran might take, but it said that the incident would bolster Iran’s resolve in its long war with Iraq.

The news agency said that all 290 people aboard the Iran Air A-300 Airbus died when the plane was shot down shortly after it left the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas. July 4 was proclaimed a day of mourning throughout Iran.

In a broadcast monitored here, Tehran Radio said the downing of the airliner was “new evidence of America’s crimes and mischief, crimes which expose America’s nature more than ever before.”

A broadcast commentary said: “We will not leave the crimes of America unanswered. We will resist the plots of the Great Satan and avenge the blood of our martyrs from criminal mercenaries.”

Television pictures from Iran showed scenes of flares being set off from helicopters to light up the crash area and of small boats moving in to pick up floating bodies of the victims. The broadcast said that 110 bodies have been recovered.

The camera focused on the deck of a ship where a rescue worker held up the body of an infant and shook his fist. According to the television report, the victims included 66 children.

Hit by 2 Missiles

“Eyewitnesses on Hengham Island and Iranian military forces in the Persian Gulf all clearly saw the passenger plane hit by two surface-to-air missiles fired by the American warship,” IRNA reported.

Interviewed by Iranian television, a senior officer at Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization challenged U.S. statements that the Airbus was initially mistaken for an F-14 fighter plane.

“The wide-body Airbus could be seen even with the naked eye at the altitude it was flying,” the official said. “The F-14 has a distinctive shape and is not comparable with an Airbus in terms of maneuverability. It is just not acceptable that the two are similar in any way.”

Wreckage Recovered

IRNA reported that pieces of the aircraft, which was on a scheduled flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai, were recovered showing that the plane had been attacked.

The Iran Air flights from Bandar Abbas to Dubai are usually full with shoppers eager to buy hard-to-find goods in the duty-free markets of the United Arab Emirates. Owing to the deteriorating economy of Iran, it is virtually impossible for Iranians to find goods such as television sets and video cassette recorders at home.

While the news that Tehran circulated abroad tended to concentrate on the shooting down of the airliner, Tehran Radio’s Farsi-language service, which is heard here in Cyprus, dwelt on Sunday’s naval engagement between U.S. and Iranian war vessels and linked them with what it described as an effort by the United States to find an excuse to attack Iran.

‘The Great Satan’

Since the start of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s, under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the United States has been regarded as the “Great Satan,” engaged in a conspiracy against Iran and the Islamic world. In recent times, the Reagan Administration has been accused of siding with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

The Iranians gave a distinctly different version from that provided by Washington about events leading up to Sunday’s clash near the Strait of Hormuz.

According to the Iranian account, Iranian patrol boats were attacked by American naval vessels. In the clash, two Iranian sailors were missing, according to IRNA.

The agency said the patrol boats shot down one U.S. helicopter.

Iran’s Version of Events

The press agency quoted a military official as saying that “the American troops in the Persian Gulf have been trying to make trouble for Iranian patrol units over the past few days” and adding that the United States was “seeking an excuse to engage Iranian forces.”

Sunday’s fighting was the most serious confrontation in the gulf between the United States and Iran since late April, when U.S. forces sank six Iranian warships and destroyed two oil platforms in retaliation for Iran’s placing of mines in the gulf, one of which hit and damaged the destroyer Samuel B. Roberts.

The Iranians have been particularly upset since a visit to the area by Gen. George B. Crist, commander of all U.S. forces in the gulf region. Crist disclosed that Iran had installed permanent launch sites for Chinese-made Silkworm missiles.

News reports from Tehran on Sunday quoted Crist as having said that the United States was looking for a pretext to attack Iranian naval bases. The reports added that that “such a policy adopted by the United States could very well explain its navy attack on the Iranian patrol boats.”

Stepped Up Attacks

Meanwhile, Western diplomats were uncertain about the reasoning behind Iran’s apparent decision to step up attacks on neutral shipping in the Persian Gulf in recent days, actions such as Saturday’s assault on the Danish supertanker Karama Maersk, which was beaten back by a U.S. warship.

But attacks on such shipping are Iran’s usual way of responding to attacks by Iraqi warplanes against Iranian tankers and oil installations. The Iraqis have recently stepped up their air raids against Iranian targets.

It was repeated Iranian gunboat attacks that prompted Kuwait to seek U.S. naval escorts for its oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, a development that led to the greatly increased deployment of American forces in the gulf beginning a year ago.

Western analysts said they doubted that Iran would attempt to escalate the conflict with the United States in the gulf, knowing that in a direct military confrontation, Washington could deploy overwhelming force. The United States has a task force of 28 warships in the area at present.