Iranian Urges Palestinians to Kill Americans

Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Friday called on Palestinians to kill Americans and other Westerners to avenge their dead in the 17-month uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The call provoked an immediate reaction from Washington, where the Administration issued a worldwide alert to American diplomatic and military installations, warning of a possible renewal of terrorist attacks on U.S. targets.

In an inflammatory declaration, Rafsanjani said that “the people of Palestine . . . must avenge the blood (of the reported 461 Palestinian deaths in the occupied territories).”

British and French, Also

“If in retaliation for every Palestinian martyred in Palestine they kill and execute, not inside Palestine, five Americans or Britons or Frenchmen, (the Israelis) would not continue these wrongs.”

Rafsanjani’s remarks were quoted by the official Iranian news agency in a report monitored in Nicosia. The news agency said that the Speaker, a strong candidate for the presidency in elections scheduled for August, delivered his “strong advice” in Friday prayers in Tehran.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater issued the strongest Administration comment on Iran since President Bush took office.

“We find it appalling and strongly condemn, in no uncertain terms, Rafsanjani’s call for Palestinians to murder our citizens, citizens of allied countries and other innocent people,” Fitzwater said.

“It is an exhortation for Palestinians to commit terrorism and only serves to confirm that terrorism remains an integral feature of Ayatollah (Ruhollah) Khomeini’s regime. The outrageous call to murder and terrorism by Iran’s Speaker of the Parliament marks another step backwards for Iran away from the community of civilized nations. We hold the Iranian leadership responsible for any attacks on American interests or citizens.

“What we see here is the same kind of incredible and outrageous comments that we saw in the (novelist) Salman Rushdie affair,” Fitzwater added. “Both are totally beyond the bounds of human understanding.”

One counterterrorism official in Washington described the Iranian’s remarks as “outrageous,” adding: “That’s the kind of language, particularly out of Rafsanjani, that could lead to some disastrous consequences. This guy could get a lot of people killed.”

Rafsanjani’s demand for vengeance came on a day of massive rallies in the Iranian capital, marking Jerusalem Day, a holiday dedicated to the Palestinian cause.

“Those who give $10 billion a year to preserve Israel and know what they are doing, is their blood worth anything?” Rafsanjani asked his audience. “It is not hard to kill Americans and Frenchmen. It is a bit difficult (to kill) Israelis, but there are so many (Americans and Frenchmen) everywhere in the world.”

Urges Terrorism

The news agency said that the Iranian official also “called on Palestinians to hijack planes to swap prisoners in Israeli hands and to blow up factories in Western countries.”

Rafsanjani, a Muslim cleric as well as a politician and commander of the Iranian army, was not concerned, the monitored report said, about “Western accusations of encouraging violence, and neither should be the Palestinians.”

Until Friday, the Bush Administration had generally taken a comparatively moderate line on Iran, beginning with the President’s reference to better relations with Tehran in his inaugural address. Moreover, there has been a four-month hiatus in suspected Mideast terrorism attacks on American targets since the Dec. 21 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland.

But the Administration now warns of a possible renewal of violence, with concern centered mainly on American interests in the Middle East and Europe.

Rafsanjani’s remarks conformed to a pattern emerging in the tempestuous politics of Iran. Anti-Western rhetoric began there in February, when Khomeini, the Muslim country’s supreme leader, demanded the execution of author Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” he condemned as blasphemous. Britain, where Rushdie lives, broke relations with Tehran, and 13 other countries, mainly European, withdrew their ambassadors at least temporarily from the Iranian capital. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Tehran.

Khomeini’s remarks were interpreted in part as a signal to Iranian officials to take an anti-Western stance. Several top leaders in Tehran, including Rafsanjani, had supported stronger trade and diplomatic contacts with the West in the wake of Iran’s agreement to a cease-fire last August in its long and bitter war with Iraq.

The 88-year-old ayatollah subsequently declared that his earlier personal choice as successor, the Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, was unfit for leadership. Like Rafsanjani, Montazeri had supported stronger ties with the West to rebuild Iran’s war-shattered economy. He had also criticized the brutal justice meted out by Khomeini’s regime.

U.S. officials were both alarmed and perplexed Friday by Rafsanjani’s comments because he is widely considered to be one of the most pragmatic Iranian leaders.

“It was a strange thing to do right now,” one State Department official said. “We frankly are not sure what to make of it. . . . It is particularly worrisome from Rafsanjani. . . . You have to ask why he is doing it. It may be wrapped up in the (Iranian) presidential election. . . . He’s very adept at reading the political tea leaves. He will go in whatever political direction he feels is necessary to strengthen his position. . . . But it is really disturbing that he would do something like this.”

An intelligence official in Washington said: “It is Jerusalem Day (in Iran) and rhetoric is always high on those occasions. But coming from Rafsanjani, this may be more than just rhetoric. He may be trying to cover himself by getting out in front of the parade on this issue. And it does come in context of the general anti-Western atmosphere after the Rushdie affair.”

In recent weeks, Rafsanjani has been taking a harder line in his comments on the West, and his political star has apparently risen again. Two weeks ago, he used the occasion of Friday prayers in Tehran to announce the arrest of a number of top-ranking military officers in what he called a “big American spy ring” operating in Iran. In Washington, presidential press secretary Fitzwater denied any knowledge of such a ring and suggested that Rafsanjani’s accusations were politically motivated.

Thursday night, Iran Television began a series called “Top Secret,” in which some of the accused spies are expected to make on-the-air confessions of their alleged crimes.

Times staff writers Robin Wright and James Gerstenzang, in Washington, contributed to this story.