But the US admitted within a day that it was one of their ships that shot down the plane.
Compare that to next day of the recent crash when an iranian official posted on the next day that it was scientifically impossible to have been an iranian missile.
But at least they think they have arrested the person who posted the video showing the crash and making the cause obvious.
"On 14 January it was announced that Iranian authorities had arrested the person who had published a video of the aircraft being shot down."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51114945
The investigation is on Iranian soil. There is no access to the FAA or similar agencies. Iran would have every reason to want to cover up an erroneous missile launch.
In Ukraine, there was a cooperative effort to investigate the crash, and it was found to be a Russian missile.
Probably because of
>During the incident, two Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jet interceptors reported losing instrumentation and communications as they approached the object. These were restored upon withdrawal.
>One of the aircraft also reported a temporary weapons systems failure while the crew was preparing to open fire.
These were explained away in the wikipedia article, but who knows the truth... Hidden away in another language.
It wasn't actually. Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down via a SM-2MR surface-to-air missile. Its the first paragraph on the Wikipedia article.
This is an insanely important distinction, since a fighter pilot would have had the opportunity to visually inspect the craft beforehand. Where in this case, the accident was made due to incorrect system information which misidentified the aircraft as being anything other than a commercial airline.
> I am wagering an educated guess here that the technical difficulties on the plane were transponder related. If the defense missile systems the Iranian use were set up with auto interrogation, which is a fairly common thing, and the plane had issues with their transponder, which also happens then it is possible that the defense system cued the commercial flight as hostile or suspect and either launched a missile at the plane (not sure of Irans capabilities and limitations with their missile systems in regards to auto-fire) or an inexperienced operator with weapon release authority pressed a button to shoot a missile at what his system was telling him was a bad guy.
> Missile systems have a series of electronic breaks (think buttons that open and close relays allowing the missile firing voltage to reach the igintor) and mechanical breaks (think keys that have to be inserted and turned to the live/fire position). As the threat level increases the operators automate more of the process by closing these breaks. This makes for a faster response time to any threat the system identifies.
> So was it possible that an Iranian missile system was set with the minimum number of breaks/automated in a way a missile could have been inadvertently fired? I would say absolutely this is plausible given the attack a few hours prior with an expectation of an American response.
>There is no way anyone can know cause of the crash unless if it was shot down or bombed (in that case the missile comanders and/or terrorists would know).
There's enough surveillance on Iranian airspace after the missile launches that every state-actor with the capability in the region should be able to determine whether the plane was shot down.
Lemme be blunt. Some people believe that since this happened at a time military tensions between Iran and the US were escalating, the plane could have been taken down mistakenly by a trigger-happy general as a false positive.
Plane took off and according to Iranians had a 1 in a million chance engine fire. The plane continues to fly, it has multiple engines for redundancy.
The video showing a missile hitting a plane and later catching fire and crashing. Pictures of a missile at the crash site; shrapnel damage on the plane for sure. Unclear if it's legit or not, but lets say it's legit. It was shot down.
If it were Iran who shot it down. Why were there multiple people awake in the middle of the night recording a dark sky on the off chance Iran shoots their own plane down? If it were the Iran government they wouldn't want evidence like that.
Why were the Americans so quick at being able to say Iran shot down the plane?
Is it perhaps because (label group here) had an Iranian AA missile to use in Tehran. Had their agents record the missile attack so that they could blame Iran?
That's the more likely story.
Interesting how Trump was very untrumplike calling for peace earlier.
Interesting how there were no American citizens on that plane.
Later Iranian gov official statement corrected an earlier one that claimed the plane turned toward a restricted military installation. Also that correction stated that the crew thought the 737 was a cruise missile.
A cruise missile approaching a target is not climbing to 8000ft but with how poor the export market Tor mk1 RADAR is I guess it's plausible the crew was spooked https://gfycat.com/pastelcourageouseeve
Tangentially related: In 1988, Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by an American missile cruiser, killing 290 people. It was likely due to a UI problem with the aircraft tracking system on the cruiser that reused an ID number from a potential enemy fighter aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
>A spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, Abolfazl Shekarchi, rejected speculation that the plane had been attacked accidentally by Iranian forces as “ridiculous”.
Huh. Why wouldn't the US show proof of this? Seems pretty easy to do.
From the page:
> According to the Iranian government, the cruiser negligently shot down the aircraft, which was transmitting IFF squawks in Mode III, a signal that identified it as a civilian aircraft, and not Mode II as used by Iranian military aircraft.
Given the US response (diplomatic note from Reagan), it seems that the error was on the USS Vincennes, not the Iranians.
The Iranian military would undoubtedly have known which missile systems would have been deployed in the area as well as the launch and impact characteristics of such systems. It would also be fairly unbelievable if one of the launchers came back two missiles short without any follow up.
While the thought-making process leading up to launch may take time to deceiper, I doubt they had any doubt as to what caused the crash.
To me it looks like Ukrainian embassy in Teheran reported to Ukraine what Iranians told them. This then gets repeated in Ukrainian media, picked up by western media and we have a story how Ukrainian embassy says it's not a missile. I doubt they know for sure at this moment.
There is no way anyone can know cause of the crash unless if it was shot down or bombed (in that case the missile comanders and/or terrorists would know).
Iran declaring it a "technical defect" after just a few hours is not enough to rule out a accidental missile shoot or similar.
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