Of the 82 Iranian dead, more than 60 were said to be postgraduate students heading to colleges in Canada
“WE HAVE INTELLIGENCE from multiple sources including our allies and our own intelligence,” declared Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, speaking on January 9th of the loss of a Ukrainian airliner that crashed in Tehran in the early hours of the previous day, killing 63 Canadians and 113 others. “The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile . This may well have been unintentional.
Iran’s response to the disaster had already aroused some disquiet. It was quick to blame a mechanical fault. Though the Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737-800’s black-box flight recorders were soon recovered, it did not offer to share them with American or other Western investigators, who are often asked to help, and invited in the Ukrainian authorities instead. Only after reports emerged of the shooting-down did it announce it had invited Boeing to join the investigation.
That a civilian passenger jet apparently became a target is an astonishing blunder, says Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London. He notes that the plane was climbing from Tehran airport at low speed and broadcasting a standard radar transponder code visible to air-defence operators. Mr Bronk says that the SA-15 is a “modern system with data-link capabilities that should have ensured operators had a good picture of the airspace traffic around them.
One consequence will be severe disruption to aviation. Several airlines have already suspended flights to Iran but many more may do so until they can be sure that they will not also fall victim to a stray missile. Airlines also suspended flights over Iranian and Iraqi airspace or changed flight paths to avoid the area, making for longer journeys. They will be even more wary now.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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