TEHRAN, Iran – For some Iranians, it offered a grim echo of an accidental takedown of US forces more than 30 years ago.
The details of the interaction on Thursday night are in dispute. Iranian state media reported that two American fighter jets approached an Iranian plane, forcing its pilot to quickly change altitude, a move that left at least two passengers injured.
However, a spokesman for the United States Central Command said in a statement that a single F-15 fighter jet had conducted a “visual inspection” of the plane at a “safe distance” before flying.
For some, the incident recalled the July 3 shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the US Navy, which remains one of the moments when the Iranian government signals its US mistrust during decades.
“It was almost a failure,” Habib Abdolhossein, an Iranian doctoral student, told NBC News by phone. “But there is no guarantee that passengers will be lucky next time and will not share the fate of those aboard Flight 655,” he said.
The 1988 attack on the Iran Air flight came in the midst of the so-called Oil Tanker War which saw US forces patrol shipping channels in the Persian Gulf to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers, while the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard of Iran often harassed or invaded incoming ships with smaller ships.
The tactic is still deployed today in the Straits of Hormuz Strait, where 20 percent of world oil passes.
As part of a then-twice-weekly route conducted by the airline for over 20 years, Iran Air Flight 655 took off from Bandar Abbas, Iran, heading for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
The USS Vincennes mistaken it for an Iranian F-14 fighter jet, despite having state-of-the-art combat equipment at the time.
The United States says the Navy made 11 radio warning calls on different frequencies before the Vincennes fired two missiles at the plane, shooting it down and killing all 290 on board, 66 of whom were babies and children.
Iran would eventually sue the US, reaching a $ 131.8 million settlement, though Captain William C. Rogers of the USS Vincennes would later receive the Legion of Merit award, further angering Tehran.
Noting that the flight was shot down “towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when the Reagan administration supported the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who invaded Iran in 1980”, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, professor of global thought and comparative philosophy at SOAS University Londoner told NBC News by email that “it remains a national trauma for many Iranians, and is commemorated as such every year.”
In subsequent years, state television in the Middle East country broadcast live images on the anniversary of mourners crying from boats at the place where the plane sank, throwing flowers into the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.
“I think it is pretty clear that the Iranians believe that the United States does not care about the lives of innocent people,” Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University, told NBC News by text message, pointing to recent United States sanctions United against Iran
The “threat from a civilian airliner” would only increase Iranians’ hostility to the United States, similar to the anger felt in 1988, he said.
“Even in this recent incident, they try to blame us,” he added. “That leads to the depth of this anger.”
Iranian politicians have also complained about the incident.
“United States government terrorism continues in the skies, land and sea,” Culture Minister Seyyed Abbas Salehi wrote Friday.
While the Iranian president has yet to address the latest incident, he made reference to Flight 655 after a U.S. drone attack killed prominent Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January.
Criticizing the comments of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who said that if Iran retaliated for the murder of Soleimani, the American forces had chosen 52 targets to be attacked in Iran, one for each hostage held after the inauguration of the United States Embassy in 1979: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted: Those referring to number 52 should also remember number 290. # IR655 “.
Shortly thereafter, in January, Iran admitted that it unintentionally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane hours after launching ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases that host US troops, blaming “human error” for the “great tragedy” that killed the 176 people on board. .
Amin Hossein Khodadadi reported from Tehran and Isobel van Hagen from London.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
