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| An Iranian holds a newspaper with a picture of the debris of the Ukrainian plane that crashed in Tehran on January 8, 2020, outside a news stand in the Islamic republic's capital (AFP Photo/ATTA KENARE) |
Paris (AFP) - When a Boeing passenger jet crashed in Iran early on January 8, speculation immediately swirled that the only plausible explanation was that it had been shot down by Iran.
The crash
of the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight came hours after Tehran had
launched a barrage of missiles at bases housing American troops in Iraq,
retaliating for the killing of commander Qasem Soleimani in a US strike.
Immediately,
theories multiplied arguing that Tehran's air defence system, on high alert for
possible US retaliation, may have been triggered by accident.
Western
leaders cited intelligence pointing to an accidental strike by Iran. Verified
video images later emerged showing a missile striking a plane.
From
Wednesday to Friday, Iranian officials repeatedly insisted that the plane had
not been shot down. Early on Saturday however, the Islamic republic admitted
that the plane had been hit by a short-range missile in what President Hassan
Rouhani described as a "catastrophic mistake".
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Ukrainian passenger jet crash in Iran (AFP Photo)
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What
happened on January 8?
The Boeing
737-800NG for UIA's flight PS752 between Tehran and Kiev took off from Imam
Khomeini International Airport at 6:12 am local time.
Although
there was no distress message from the pilot, the plane had begun to turn back
for the airport before crashing at 6:18 am, said the Iranian Civil Aviation
Organization. The aircraft came down near Sabashahr on the outskirts of Tehran.
There were
10 departures from Tehran airport that day before flight PS752, according to
the Flight Radar 24 monitoring site. That raised questions as to why air
traffic had not been halted given the situation.
All 176
people on board the flight PS752 -- mainly Iranians and Canadians, including
dual nationals, but also Ukrainians, Afghans, Britons and Swedes -- were
killed.
How did pressure grow?
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Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the first major leader to publicly
state Iran
could be to blame for the plane crash (AFP Photo/Dave Chan)
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How did pressure grow?
Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau was the first major leader to publicly state Iran could
be to blame. He said Canada had intelligence from multiple sources
"including our allies and our own intelligence" that indicated
"the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile."
"This
may well have been unintentional," Trudeau added.
His
language was echoed by other Western leaders including Dutch Premier Mark
Rutte, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
US
President Donald Trump said he had "suspicions" as "somebody
could have made a mistake", and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo then
said the United States believed it was "likely" that an Iranian
missile downed the airliner.
The New
York Times also said it had verified a video appearing to show a missile
hitting a plane at night above the Tehran suburb of Parand, west of the
airport.
What did
Iran initially say?
For three
days, Iranian officials refused to countenance any suggestion that one of its
missiles had brought down the plane.
The
country's civil aviation chief Ali Abedzadeh said that one "thing is for
certain, this airplane was not hit by a missile", arguing that it would
have exploded immediately if hit by a missile.
Experts
questioned that claim, arguing that such missiles explode before coming into
contact with the target.
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This handout photograph taken and released on January 11, 2019, by The
National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, shows people analysing
the remains of the Ukraine International Airlines plane Boeing 737-800 that
crashed outside Tehran (AFP Photo/STR)
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What does
Iran now admit?
In an
announcement early Saturday that took many experts by surprise, Iran admitted
it had "unintentionally" shot down the jet after a missile operator
mistook the plane for a cruise missile.
Tehran said
its systems had been on high alert for American retaliation in the hours after
the Iranian strikes on bases housing US troops in Iran.
"He
had 10 seconds to decide," the aerospace commander of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said of the operator, who he
insisted had "acted alone".
"He
could have decided to strike or not to strike and under such circumstances he
took the wrong decision."
Rouhani
called it an "unforgivable mistake", vowed that compensation would be
paid to the families while those responsible would be prosecuted.
What kind
of missile was used?
Unverified
images posted on social media show the remains of a Russian-made Tor M-1
missile but Tehran has yet to give details on the kind of weaponry used.
Tehran
received 29 such air defence systems from Moscow under a $700 million contract
signed in 2005, a deal that caused considerable unease in the West.
The
Bellingcat open-source analytics website has said the origin of the images is
yet to be determined, and the people who captured the images have not come
forward.
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Ukraine's
President Volodymyr Zelensky, pictured on January 9, 2020 in a
presidential
press handout photo placing flowers at a memorial for the victims
of the
Ukraine International Airlines crash in Tehran, has toughened his stance
on
Iran (AFP Photo/HO)
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What does
Ukraine want now?
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky, initially wary of blaming Tehran, has toughened
his line since Tehran's admission.
After
Zelensky spoke to Rouhani later Saturday, the Ukrainian presidency said that
Zelensky asked Tehran to allow the bodies of the 11 Ukrainian victims to be
repatriated "by January 19".
He added
that Ukrainian diplomats had produced a list of steps to be taken to
"resolve the compensation issue".
Despite the
three days of denial from Tehran, some have compared its reaction favourably to
that from Moscow over the crash of the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down over
eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Although
the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team says a Russian-made BUK missile fired by
pro-Russian separatists was to blame, Russia still denies any involvement.
Iranian police dispersed students chanting "radical" slogans during a gathering in Tehran to honour the 176 people killed when an airliner was mistakenly shot down, Fars news agency reported https://t.co/jtSIrcZiX1— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 11, 2020
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