Iranian president gives veiled threat to another Lockerbie

The Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has warned the US “never to threaten Iran” and reminded Trump over when the US Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane IR55 in the Gulf in 1988.

Rouhani said that the US should “remember the number 290” which represents the number of Iranian passengers killed in the shooting down of the aircraft.

Five months later 270 people were killed when a bomb blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland. Libya was blamed for the Lockerbie bombing, but many experts and members from the “intelligence community” have always believed Iran was behind the bombing.

Rouhani sent a tweet which has fuelled suspicions that Tehran was behind the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. In reply to Trump’s tweet threatening to target 52 targets in Iran, president Rouhani said in tweet, “Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR55 Never threated the Iranian nation.”

According to Kyle Orton a middle east expert, he has suggested that president Rouhani has admitted Iran’s role in the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing after an Iranian passenger jet was shot down by the US.

Rouhani’s tweet has also been linked to the Lockerbie bombing by a middle east analyst, Fatima Alasrar from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She believes that Rouhani has admitted Iran’s role in the 1988 bombing.

She wrote on Twitter, “Rouhani is basically reminding @realDonaldTrump of the #Iranian Air Flight 655 carrying 290 passengers which was downed by a US navy warship the Vincennes in 1988.

“Though it was deemed a human error, Tehran worked covertly to exact its revenge. How? #Lockerbie.”

She added, “Boeing 747 airline Pan Am exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and was assumed to be an operation conducted by the #Lybians when it was #Iran who orchestrated the downing of the plane and paid the Libyans to do it.

“After years of denying, Rouhani just admitted to it!”

Veteran journalist John Simpson who is the BBC’s world affairs editor wrote in the Mail on Sunday, “Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya got the blame, but many people in the American and British intelligence community believe that Iran gave the original instructions for the attack, to avenge the shooting down of the Airbus.”