"Never threaten the Iranian nation," Iranian President Hassan Rohani launched on Twitter on Monday in response to the martial statements by US President Donald Trump, who on Saturday threatened to target 52 Iranian targets.
"Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. # IR655," writes Hassan Rohani in a reference to the tragedy of the Iran Air flight 655 Airbus, which was shot down in July 1988 by an American ship above of the Gulf and having cost the lives of 290 people.
Painful past for both countries
More than thirty years after the fact, this catastrophe, for which Iran still awaits an official apology from the United States, still haunts Iranian collective memory, just as in the United States the 1979 hostage-taking at the embassy from Tehran, during which 52 diplomats were held captive for 444 days.
Donald Trump warned Tehran on Saturday that the United States had identified 52 sites in Iran and that they would strike them "very quickly and very hard" if the Islamic Republic attacks American personnel or targets.
Rising tensions
Some of these Iranian sites "are very high profile and very important to Iran and Iranian culture," said Donald Trump in a tweet. "The United States no longer wants threats! ", He warned. Donald Trump underlined the symbolic value of this figure by making a link with the hostage crisis of 1979.
The American president has multiplied the threatening messages to the Islamic Republic since the elimination, on Friday, in an American raid in Baghdad, of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Tehran has promised to "harshly avenge" this death at the right time, including through military action. On Sunday, Donald Trump again threatened Tehran with "major retaliation" for an Iranian attack on American installations in the Middle East.
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