Speaker Cites Likelihood of Adverse World Opinion : Iran Won’t Retaliate, Rafsanjani Says

Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, declared Friday that his government will not retaliate against the United States for the destruction last Sunday of an Iranian airliner by a U.S. Navy cruiser.

“The world knows we can respond to the crime,” Rafsanjani said at prayer service in Tehran. “The United States is trying to push us to do the same thing, but we will try not to do anything wrong, not to do as the United States did. If we do the same, world opinion will be against us, and the world will not listen to us.”

After the airliner incident in the Persian Gulf, fear was expressed in many quarters that Iran would seek immediate retribution through a terrorist attack against Americans. Some Iranian leaders urged quick vengeance for the deaths of the 290 people on board the plane, an Iran Air A-300 Airbus en route from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Dubai, across the gulf in the United Arab Emirates.

Second Most Powerful Man

Last month Rafsanjani, a beardless mullah, or religious leader, was named supreme commander of the Iranian armed forces after a series of defeats in Iran’s long war with Iraq. He is regarded as the second most powerful man in the country after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

He addressed his remarks Friday to about 5,000 worshipers in an open-air mosque. Also in attendance were Iraqi prisoners of war, who shouted “Death to Iraq!” on command, and a contingent of Revolutionary Guards about to leave for the front.

Rafsanjani said the nation faces a critical time and confirmed that the Supreme Defense Council has called for a new mobilization effort. As he spoke, Tehran Radio was urging everyone capable of carrying a gun to report to a military base for service at the front.

Perhaps because of recent defeats at the hands of the Iraqis, Rafsanjani took a relatively moderate approach to the matter of the downed airliner. He said the Iranian people should not take any action against the United States until after a meeting next week of the U.N. Security Council.

He suggested that the United Nations would be wise to condemn Iraq as the aggressor in the Persian Gulf War, which has been going on for nearly eight years.

Diplomatic observers here believe that if the United Nations would condemn Iraq for starting the war--something Iran has been pressing for years--it would enable Tehran to save face and agree to an armistice. Iraq has already indicated that it would accept a cease-fire, and Iran has dropped an earlier demand that Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein must be dismissed as the price of peace.

Unexpected Reverses

Iran has suffered severe and unexpected reverses in the past few months, and the Iranian people seem to be increasingly weary of the war.

According to diplomatic sources, by counseling his people to take no anti-American action until after the Security Council meeting, Rafsanjani made it clear that he is trying to keep alive an effort to renew ties with the West. These sources said he is doing this because the war with Iraq is going badly and Iran’s economy is deteriorating.

“The country’s principal problem is the war,” Rafsanjani told the worshipers Friday.

In his remarks--punctuated with the ritual chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”--Rafsanjani indicated that although the world “knows we could respond to the crime of the United States,” retaliation would ruin the propaganda benefits Iran is reaping as a result of the incident Sunday.

He cited Iranian air force reports that the United States is capable of monitoring radio traffic with air controllers at Bandar Abbas and could easily have determined that the airliner was making routine communications with the tower before and after taking off.

‘Eagle and Sparrow’

Reiterating that Iranians also work with radar, he said, “We can recognize the difference between an Airbus and an F-14, between an eagle and a little sparrow.” Personnel on the U.S. cruiser Vincennes, which brought down the Airbus with at least one missile, have indicated that they believed the airliner to be an F-14 fighter intent on attacking the cruiser.

i Rafsanjani also condemned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain for quickly coming to the support of the United States. “Your face will be very dirty in history,” he said.

He is deeply concerned, he said, by what he called the deception practiced by Washington on the American people.

“Opinion polls in the United States,” he said, “show that most Americans believe the (Vincennes’) commander was acting properly. If this is true, it shows the worst kind of value system.”

Americans Losing ‘Nobility’

He said that if Americans continue to support the action of the Vincennes it will show that they have “lost their nobility.” Americans, he said, were quick to criticize the Soviet Union for shooting down a South Korean airliner in 1983, and should be equally ready to condemn the U.S. Navy attack on the Iranian airliner.

In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that in addition to the message of condolence that President Reagan was said to have dispatched to Iran on Sunday, Reagan had sent similar messages to each of the nations that had citizens aboard the ill-fated airliner. The message asked “that the personal sympathy and condolences of the President and the American people be conveyed directly to the bereaved families,” Fitzwater said.

Those countries are India, Italy, Kuwait, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Yugoslavia.

The White House spokesman also said that no change is contemplated in the rules of engagement governing the U.S. use of force in the Persian Gulf, at least until the Navy’s investigation of the shoot-down is completed in the next two weeks or so.

But, he said, “when you start an investigation like that, you have to be prepared to face the facts objectively at the end, and if they call for a change, a change will be made. If they don’t, well, there won’t be.”