TEHRAN - Two hundred ninety innocent people who were travelling in a passenger plane on July 3, 1988 were perished over the Persian Gulf when the US troops launched their missiles from the American warship USS Vincennes at the passenger plane. The plane had left Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, and was en route to Dubai when all the jubilant passengers who were eagerly waiting to see their next of kin on the other side of the Persian Gulf and the crew who were accompanying them perished away.

The passenger plane was flying within the Iranian air space. Hence in the first place the shooting of the plane was a violation of Iranian airspace and secondly since the plane was a passenger one, the shooting was a crime against humanity, for almost all the passenger planes that have been shot down till date had diverted from their air route or drifted to other country's territory.

Besides being an invasion of Iranian space, the attack was a symbol of U.S. state terrorism.

According to international conventions, states are not entitled to use military force against the passenger planes that fly for a peaceful purpose.

Such a move is considered an offense. Hence, the shooting besides showing that the U.S. does not respect international law, they do not spare any crime in order to achieve their goals. The White House also defends the Zionist regime's state terrorism and racism against the Palestinian people. Any sort of crime committed by the Zionist regime including kidnapping of civilians, assassination of officials, and attack against other countries are unreasonably unjustified by the United States as self defense.

The criminal act of downing the Iranian passenger plane took place within the framework of defending the Ba'th Party of Iraq during the imposed war against Iran. In order to prevent the defeat of the Iraqi regime, the U.S. directly entered war against Iran. Ironically throughout the 1990s the United States has tried to topple the same Iraqi regime that it supported in the previous decade.

Therefore the main source of all crises in the region are the Zionist regime and the United States.

The martyrdom of the innocent Iranian passengers is only one of the many crimes the U.S. has committed against the Iranian during the past half a century.

Over the past few months the U.S. officials have once again followed a vicious policy against Iran and baselessly accuse Iran of trying to gain nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction or sponsoring terrorism. On the bases of these baseless accusations, the U.S. officials have adopted a belligerent policy against Iran.

Ironically the more the United States has exacerbated its policies against Iran, the more such policies have consolidated solidarity among the Iranian nation vis-à-vis the United States.