July 21, 2022
In 1988, a U.S. Navy warship shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 civilians on board. Newly declassified files show how Margaret Thatcher’s government offered immediate support to the U.S. and assisted in the cover-up, John McEvoy reports.
By John McEvoy
Declassified UK
The attack occurred during the Iran-Iraq war, which had begun in 1980 with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran. The U.S. government backed Saddam and sent warships to the Persian Gulf to support the Iraqi war effort.
One of those warships was the USS Vincennes which, on 3 July 1988, fired two missiles at Iran Air Flight 655 while it was making a routine trip to Dubai.
Washington claimed the U.S. Navy had acted in self-defence, but this wasn’t true. The plane had not, as the Pentagon claimed, moved “outside the prescribed commercial air route,” nor had it been “descending” towards the Vincennes at “high speed.”
The U.S. thus shot down a civilian airliner, and haphazardly tried to cover it up. Some 66 children were among the 290 civilians killed.
‘No Other Government’
On March 2, 2000, U.K. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook met with U.S. General Colin Powell, who had served as U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser between 1987 and 1989.
Powell “spoke frankly” throughout the discussion, leading Cook to request that the U.S. general’s “confidence… be strictly protected,” according to the newly released files.
In particular, Powell recalled that, after the U.S. shot down Flight 655, Thatcher’s private secretary for foreign affairs, Charles Powell, “had rung immediately from Downing Street to ask what the Americans wanted the British Government to say.”
The British government thus offered immediate support to the U.S., despite it having killed hundreds of civilians, most of whom were Iranian citizens.
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