A downed Ukrainian airliner in Tehran has stirred memories of Iranian terrorism and confusion over a disaster that occurred on the same evening the Iranian regime launched an ineffective assault on U.S. positions in Iraq.
“It’s a very strange coincidence that, in this period of tensions in the Middle East, that that happened,” a Central European diplomat told the Washington Examiner.
The incident, which killed 176 people, occurred late Tuesday evening as Western allies waited to hear if an Iranian missile attack on two Iraqi military bases that house U.S. troops had resulted in casualties. Ukrainian officials initially released a statement ruling out terrorism only to retract it and call for a full investigation.
“Our priority is to establish the truth and those responsible for this terrible catastrophe,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote Wednesday on Facebook. “I implore you all to refrain from speculating and making uncorroborated theories in relation to the plane crash before any official statements are made.”
The plane might have been shot down in the fog of war, one military source said. “The Iranians might have been hyped up, expecting a response and freaking out when they thought they saw an American air attack,” the source told the Washington Examiner. “It’s possible this was a mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.”
Ukrainian officials have canceled all flights over Iranian airspace. “Until the causes of this tragedy are identified, we have decided to suspend the operation of Ukrainian airlines in the airspace of Iran,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said. “As soon as the causes are identified, the decision will be reconsidered.”
Iranian officials blamed an engine fire, but the Ukrainian airline maintains that the jetliner was “fit to fly,” just two days after a service test and was helmed by an experienced pilot.
“There weren’t any problems with the plane,” Ukraine International Airlines President Yevhen Dykhne said Wednesday. Some aviation analysts have suggested that the incident should be investigated as “a shootdown event.” Other Western observers aren’t so confident, in part because of the composition of the passenger list. More than 80 Iranians died in the crash, along with 63 Canadians.
“Iranians and Canadians are dead, seems like no one would like to do that on [either] side,” another European diplomat told the Washington Examiner. “You can never be 100% sure, but I really doubt this kind of decision could have been taken like this.”
The passenger jet was a Boeing 737-800, which is not the same as the Boeing 737 Max planes that were grounded last year after a flight control system failure caused two major crashes in less than six months. Iranian authorities have pledged to investigate the incident, but they have also announced that they will not cooperate with Boeing or the United States in conducting the investigation.
“We will not give the black boxes to the manufacturer and the Americans,” Iran Civil Aviation Organization head Ali Abedzadeh said after the crash, per state-run media.
And so, the world wonders whether the incident is a black mark on Boeing’s record or a new low for the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — or the work of a twitchy missileer misreading what he saw. “I think it’s still too early to say,” the Central European diplomat said.
