On July 3,
1988, in an unprovoked move, US carrier USS Vincennes fired two missiles at an Iranian
passenger plane, Iran Air flight 655 which
was on route to Dubai. All 290 innocent
civilians were killed. The Untied
States did not apologize or admit to wrongdoing. Washington has
always maintained that the shooting down of the passenger plane was an
accident.
But was it? The
Vincennes' crew, without visual confirmation, fired at the Iranian passenger
airliner ‘believing’ it to be an F14 jet fighter descending towards it. The
plane was not descending; it was fast ascending. Furthermore, a jet fighter is two-thirds
smaller than a passenger plane.
This
‘accident’ came on the heels of another incident in 1987 when a U.S.
ship fired its machine guns at a fishing boat from the United Arab Emirates,
killing one and injuring three. The
fishing boat had been ‘mistaken’ for an Iranian speedboat with ‘hostile’
intent![i]
Addressing
the Iran Air flight, David R. Carlson, commander
of another U.S. ship in the region (Persian Gulf) stated that the conduct of
Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident was pointedly
non-threatening," and the actions of the Vincennes "appeared to be
consistently aggressive”. The Vicennes
inclination to kill ruthlessly earned it the nickname “Robo Cruiser”[ii]
Not only was
there no apology forthcoming, but also the incident would be the start of a string of
sky-murders carried out by the United States against Iranian citizens. Thomas Whalen from the aviation law practice of
Washington firm Eckert Seamans Cherin and Mellot had argued that sanctions on
Iranian carriers are detrimental to airline safety and violate
the commitment to airline safety made by the USA, Iran and most nations of
the world in 1944 when the Chicago Convention was forged.
Immoral
and blind to laws, Robo Cruiser” gave way to Robo Sanctions. 17 planes crashed
killing some 1,500 people. Terrorism in the
skies had become another tool in Washington’s arsenal.
Encouraged,
two experts, Michael B.
Kraft, a counterterrorism consultant and
Brett Wallace, research coordinator at the International Center for Terrorism Studies, actually
endorsed acts of terrorism against Iranians. Writing for the Washington
Times in 2007, they argued:
“Most of the
current sanctions, however, are relatively invisible except to bankers or the
would-be exporter or importer. By contrast, suspending Iran Air’s
landing rights and cutting off spare parts and maintenance services would be a
very visible and dramatic step to both the Iranian public and the mullahs.”
Washington
listened. Spare parts were denied. More
crashes, more dead civilians.
Today, as
Iranians commemorate the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 and mourn the death of
290 civilians, the world must be cognizant of the fact that the United States
continues its policy of terrorism. When
it comes to mass murder, for Washington,
sky is the limit.
No comments:
Post a Comment