After months of delays, investigators in France will now have the opportunity to analyze the black box from the Ukrainian passenger plane that Iran shot down during heightened tensions with the United States.
The box, which is expected to contain the last messages from the plane before it was hit by two Iranian surface-to-air missiles on Jan. 8, were sent to Paris because France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety is an air accident investigation agency renowned for its expertise in working with the recovered information.
Iranian officials sent off the black box to France on Friday, more than six months after the incident that killed 176 people, including 82 Iranians, 57 Canadians, and 11 Ukrainians. The investigation is expected to reveal critical information about the jet’s flight path and altitude in the moments before it was destroyed.
The shoot-down came in the hours after Iran had launched more than a dozen short-range ballistic missiles at bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq. The barrage of missiles was in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Iran blames a chain of errors for the downing of the plane.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif announced that the black box would be sent to France, and he also reportedly told Ukraine that Iran was ready to “resolve legal issues and discuss how to compensate the families” of victims but was awaiting a Ukrainian delegation.
There has been much hand-wringing over the fate of the black box, with Iran blaming the delay on the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Iran particularly hard.
Although the official count claims some 271,000 people have been infected and nearly 14,000 have died, President Hassan Rouhani admitted on Saturday that the true numbers are closer to 25 million infected. An Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, claims it has counted more than 70,000 deaths in the country of 81 million.
