The shootdown has been used for years by the Islamic Republic as concrete proof of the hostility and hatred of the United States for Iran.
The downing is also believed to have frightened many within the regime establishment who feared the shootdown was a message from the United States that it was preparing to enter the ongoing war beside Iraq against Iran. Only weeks after the Iran Air Airbus was shot down, Ayatollah Khomeini accepted the UN ceasefire that had been proffered years before.
On Sunday, more than 80 relatives of those who died July 3, 1988, took a boat from Bandar Abbas out to the site in the Persian Gulf where the plane lies under the water. They dropped flowers into the water from the boat while military helicopters flew overhead also dropping flowers into the sea.
“The crime by the United States is never forgivable. The stain will remain on the United States forever,” said Hesameddin Ansari, 34, whose father was on board the plane.
The government continues to make a major event of the anniversary every year. State television repeatedly broadcast film from 1988 showing the bodies of those killed being pulled from the water. In Tehran, a 50-foot picture of the Airbus was displayed at a major road junction.
The Islamic Republic says the Airbus was shot down intentionally on orders from Washington. As proof, the government sites the fact that two years after the shootdown, President George H. W. Bush awarded the Legion of Merit to Captain William C. Rogers III, the skipper of the Vincennes, upon his retirement. The award is standard for retiring senior officers. The citation did not mention the Airbus downing in its description of Rogers’ career.
The US Navy said the crew of the Vincennes mistook the Airbus for an F-14 fighter jet and thought they were about to be attacked. Iran has said for years that the ship’s radar could readily tell the difference between the huge Airbus and a relatively small fighter.
But just after the shootdown, the head of Iran’s Air Force told reporters that radars cannot distinguish size; they only show the location of a flying object.
A Navy investigation portrayed the crew around Rogers as very nervous and frightened, and showed numerous errors. None of the crewmen had been in combat. The enlisted man on the radar told the captain the incoming plane was descending as if on an attack run. But the recording made by the radar showed that the plane was ascending.
Other equipment on the Vincennes recorded every button the crew pushed. That showed that the weapons officer pushed the missile launch button two dozen times before someone else noted that he had failed to turn the unlocking mechanism so the missile launch button would be engaged.