After President Donald Trump posted on Twitter a threat to target 52 Iranian sites, if Iran attacked US citizens or assets, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani responded by reminding Trump of “the number 290” and “IR655”.
“Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655 never threatened the Iranian nation”, Rouhani Tweeted late on Monday. In his Tweet, Trump mentioned that the targeted “52 Iranian sites represented the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago”– a reference to the 1979-81 siege of the US embassy in Tehran.
Rouhani’s 290: the 290 mentioned by Rouhani is the number of people killed after a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz shot down an Iranian passenger airliner-Iran Air Flight IR655 from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai-over Iranian territorial waters on July 3, 1988. Among those killed were 66 children.