Iran Marchers Assail U.S. and Iraq’s Invasion

Anti-American marchers swept through Tehran and other cities Friday in the first major Iranian demonstrations of the Persian Gulf crisis.

Marking the Muslim holy day, pro-Iraqi rhetoric and threats against Western powers heightened the war of words in several other Middle East capitals. Further protests are expected Monday, the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed.

Tehran Radio said that thousands of Iranians joined the demonstrations, chanting “Death to America” and “Islam is victorious, America is vanquished.”

The broadcast said the demonstrators also demanded that Iraq withdraw its troops from Kuwait. A commentator declared:

“All the Muslims of the region were asked to strengthen the united front against world blasphemy taking the fate of the Islamic world into their own hands and starting the liberation jihad (holy war) against the invaders.”

Friday’s protests marked a rhetorical turnabout from Iranian developments earlier this week, including the delicately controlled language of Syrian President Hafez Assad’s four-day visit and Thursday’s agreement to restore diplomatic relations with Britain. The difference reflected the political divisions in Tehran.

Islamic hard-liners called the tune Friday, denouncing “alien forces, particularly the U.S.A.,” and the leaders of Saudi Arabia who invited Western military forces onto their territory in the face of the threat posed by Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

The Saudis, the broadcast said, “have stooped to this disgrace merely out of fear of losing their inauspicious crowns and thrones and have belied their claims of being the guardians of the two holy mosques (at Mecca and Medina).”

Lending their voices to the accelerating propaganda war were two Palestinian guerrilla leaders.

Abul Abbas, the Syrian-born head of the Baghdad-based Palestine Liberation Front, declared that his men will retaliate against American and other Western aircraft if any Iraqi planes are attacked under the air embargo approved Tuesday by the U.N. Security Council.

The embargo does not call for armed action against aircraft, but threats from Abbas are taken seriously by Western counterterrorism services. Abbas is the Palestinian maverick who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.

Abbas is wanted in the United States for the killing of Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly wheelchair-bound passenger on the ship.

He also has been blamed for an abortive seaborne assault last spring on an Israeli beach near Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told Reuters news agency Friday, “It is very clear from our talks with Iraqi officials and (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein that the American Administration is pushing the situation in the gulf toward one choice--war.”

Hawatmeh, who returned to the Jordanian capital from a trip to Baghdad, predicted that war will break out by late next month. He said Hussein will not discuss any change in the annexation of Kuwait until Western forces leave the gulf region, if then.

An estimated 1,000 Jordanians carried out a pro-Iraqi rally Friday in Amman, calling on King Hussein to arm them to join in the confrontation with Western forces. The crowd burned U.S. and British flags, and one speaker reportedly called on the Iraqis to use chemical weapons if war breaks out.

Support for Iraqi President Hussein is strong in Jordan, where the national economy has been crippled by broken trade links with Iraq. The king has agreed to support the embargo, although Jordan is still receiving nearly 40% of its oil from Iraq.

The air embargo, Islamic outrage and tightening food restrictions in Iraq came together at the end of the week to spark a new round of tension in the region.

In Jordan, refugee officials reported a marked increase in the number of Asians reaching camps on this side of the Iraqi border, apparently spurred by a Baghdad announcement that no foreigners will get rationed food beginning Monday.

“There is a strong flow of evacuees now compared to previous days,” a Jordanian official said.

Unconfirmed reports said the head count rose from 34,000 Wednesday to 43,000 Thursday, and the daily number coming in once again exceeds the level being flown out to their homelands by means of the refugee airlift at Amman’s Queen Alia airport. Refugee officials said the newcomers included Egyptian migrant workers, an important segment of Iraq’s farm labor.

The U.N. Disaster Relief Organization said more than 620,000 foreigners have arrived in Jordan from Iraq since the invasion of Kuwait.

In London, the British Foreign Office called in the Iraqi ambassador to demand clarification of the announcement on rationed food.

“Iraq’s obligations toward foreign nationals on its territory are quite clear and include ensuring that (they) are not denied access to food,” a spokesman said.

In other developments:

The Pentagon said Friday that a U.S. airman suffered a gunshot wound in his shoulder at a facility in Saudi Arabia. The Air Force, which is investigating the Thursday incident, said it has been unable to determine whether the shooting was an act of terrorism.

The airman, who was not identified, is a general purpose mechanic with the 833rd Transportation Squadron based at Hollomon Air Force Base in New Mexico. He is in good condition at the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing’s Air Transportable Hospital, the Pentagon said. The airman was assigned to the transportation unit supporting the 354th and 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing operations as part of Operation Desert Shield.

Turkey announced the first reported inspections under the air embargo, which prohibits all but humanitarian cargoes for Iraq. The Anatolian News Service said three Baghdad-bound passenger planes--Indian, Soviet and Polish--were ordered to submit to inspection. No prohibited cargo was found, and the planes were allowed to proceed, the news agency said. It did not say where the inspections took place.

In the small country of Djibouti, on Africa’s Red Sea coast, a grenade was thrown into a crowded cafe, killing the 9-year-old son of a French soldier and wounding 17 other people, most of them French. A number of off-duty French troops were in the cafe, according to news reports.

Officials in Djibouti, a former French colony and site of a major French military base involved in the Persian Gulf buildup, said it was not clear whether the attack was related to the French military role in the gulf.

The attack took place Thursday night. No group has claimed responsibility.

In Baghdad, an editorial in the government newspaper Al Jumhuriyah repeated earlier Iraqi threats that war, if it comes, will not be contained in Kuwait and Iraq.

“Iraq will not make itself the only area for the battle against the enemies but will take the battle to more than one place,” the newspaper said. “The fires will eat all oil wells, as well as the Zionist entity (Israel) and the U.S. agents in the region.”

It did not, however, repeat the implication made by the ruling Revolutionary Command Council at the start of the week that Iraq will fight if the U.N. sanctions strangle its economy.