Downing of Iranian Military Aircraft Over Iraq Sets Off Bizarre Charade

By Kurt Holden

One of the most bizarre incidents in the dramatic history of Iran's current regime occurred in the immediate aftermath of the April 5 air raid into Iraqi territory by between 8 and 13 Iranian Air Force F-4 aircraft. The raid was aimed at the Ashraf Base Camp, one of five military bases in Iraq of the National Liberation Army, the military arm of the People's Mojahedin, a major Iranian opposition group.

The raid took place on what the Iranian attackers had expected to be the first day of the major Islamic holiday, Eid al Fitr, on which Iranian political and military leaders in exile might have been expected to assemble for holiday observances at the military base. Buildings at the base were damaged and one NLA member was killed in the attack. Iraqi warplanes scrambled at the news that Iranian military aircraft were conducting an attack over Iraqi territory, despite the U.N. ban on flights by fixed-wing Iraqi military aircraft.

Instead of being caught off guard in the midst of a military parade or political speeches, however, NLA personnel raised a curtain of anti-aircraft fire over the base, and at least one of the attacking aircraft was heavily damaged.

Within an hour, word reached the Iranian opposition base that two Iranian Air Force pilots had ejected from the damaged F-4, which had crashed in Iraqi territory. Members of the People's Mojahedin already had assembled members of the international press corps visiting in Baghdad in buses to visit the bombed NLF base. When they learned of the crashed F-4, the Iranian opposition leaders changed the itinerary of the press tour and arrived at the site while the aircraft wreckage still was smoldering.

The downed aircraft's pilot was 40-year-old Col. Qassem Mohammad Amin, deputy commander of the Nojeh Air Force Base at Hamedan, from which the Iranian air raid was launched. His co-pilot was 27-year-old Flight Lieutenant Arsalan Sharifi. They were turned over to Iraqi authorities by Kurdish villagers. The downed pilots said the attack originally was planned for March 20, the Persian New Year, at which time annual ceremonies are held at the NLA base. The plan was canceled when reports reached Iran that the plan had been "leaked" to the People's Mojahedin.

On April 4, the Nojeh Air Base was sealed off, and early on April 5, several of the Iranian Air Force's 15 operational F-4 jets launched the raid. With alarm bells ringing all over the Middle East that the attack might re-ignite hostilities between Iran and Iraq or between U.N. coalition forces and Iraq, the Iranian government issued its own explanation for the air strike.

The raid was retaliation for an attack by NLA fighters on two Iranian villages in the evening of April 4, the Rafsanjani government said. Four persons were killed, seven wounded and several were kidnapped, the Iranian government announced, in the Beshkan and Bayani villages in the Qasr-e-Sharin area near the border with Iraq.

Journalists in Iraq had arrived at the damaged camp and destroyed aircraft on the day of the attack, and U.N. investigators arrived the following day. Four days passed, however, before U.N. investigators were allowed to visit the two Iranian villages.

Based upon intercepted telephone calls within Iran, the People's Mojahedin later released a bizarre story of what happened in those two villages, once it was determined that U.N. investigators would be coming.

All of the villagers, between 300 and 400 people, were moved out, the Mojahedin charge. The villagers were replaced by members of Revolutionary Guard units, who then blew up three buildings, and opened fire on the village and a number of vehicles, including some captured from the NLA in the fighting within Iraq that had followed Desert Storm a year earlier.

When the U.N. investigators arrived, they were greeted by Iranian Revolutionary Guards who described retaking the villages, and by guardsmen who had shaved their beards and put on tattered clothes in order to impersonate NLA guerrilla fighters "captured" in the raid. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards had shaved their beards but left moustaches in order to play the role of the more secular-minded NLA oppositionists. Since a high percentage of NLA personnel are university graduates, the "prisoners" were given eyeglasses to wear, according to a People's Mojahedin spokesman.

Playing the part of "wounded" defenders of the villages were two guardsmen who really had been accidentally wounded in training accidents and others who donned bandages for visits by U.N. inspectors to hospitals.

Staff members of the People's Mojahedin press office in Washington, DC, offered transcripts of telephone calls, recorded during and after the hoax. Some were from civilian officials asking when the real villagers, who were becoming unruly during their several days of displacement, could be returned to their homes.

The incident was the only light moment in otherwise grim news from economically deteriorating Iran, where measures to clear urban shantytowns provoked destructive riots in Mashhad, Arak and Shiraz. The riots, in which a number of people were killed, were followed by political executions.

Moves against Iranian opposition figures were not confined to Iraq. A Mojahedin leader also allegedly was kidnapped in Turkey. Whether Iranian government attacks on political opponents abroad were approved by "moderate" President Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, or orchestrated to embarrass him by some of the extremists whom he edged out of the regime in recent elections, Iran's problems are contributing to a deterioration of security throughout the country. The regime some believe still is exporting its own fiery brand of Islamic revolution abroad may be having increasing trouble maintaining its credibility at home.

Kurt Holden, a retired film maker from Southern California, divides his time between the U.S. and the Middle East.