Iran’s air tragedy and the innocent lives taken amid the fog of war
THE rising tensions in the gulf were, sadly, always going to result in death and destruction but the tragedy that unfolded in the skies above Tehran last week shows how military posturing can very quickly result in the loss of innocent lives. The Trump administration’s assassination of Iranian General and national hero Qasem Solemani prompted an international crisis and led to justifiable fears that another devastating war was about to engulf the middle east.
Although the Iranian’s did react with attacks on US airbases in Iraq – a move it described as ‘a proportional response’ in language more typical of the US military – the fraught situation, and the risk of escalating violence appeared to have calmed when both sides dialled back on their aggressive rhetoric.
Tragically, there was to be another awful twist in the tale when, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a Ukrainian airliner crashed soon after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.
Though they initially denied responsibility the Iranian Goverment have now admitted that the plane was accidentally shot down by their military.
In the face of gorwing evidence Iran had argued that technical issues brought down the jet despite video footage and evidence from the US seeming to prove that it was hit by a surface to air missile shortly before it plummeted to earth engulfed in flames.
Even without Iran’s admission it was easy to imagine how in the midst of massive tension – and with the US President threatening attacks on Iranian cultural sites – a highly stressed field commander could have mistakenly fired on the airliner.
That the missile appears to have come from a mobile launcher equipped with only basic radar systems – and likely with a relatively inexperienced crew – adds credence to the argument.
Such awful incidents are not without precedence and amid the ‘fog of war’ appalling mistakes are often made with lethal consequences.
Indeed, last week’s tragedy over Tehran has much in common with a similar incident in the late 1980s when a US warship blew an Iranian airliner out of the sky over the Gulf.
It was July 1988 – towards the end of the Iran Iraq War – and the US Navy vessel the USS Vincennes was on patrol in the Strait of Hormunz as part of an operation to protect international shipping and oil supplies.
After moving into Iranian waters while pursuing Iranian gunboats the crew of the Vincennes – equipped with a new, ultra high tech radar system – somehow managed to misidentify an ascending civilian airliner for a fighter jet that was diving to attack them.
A missile was launched, the plane was obliterated and 290 lives were snuffed out in an instant.
We may never know exactly what happened over Tehran last week but it the tragedy shows once more that in the ‘fog of war’ is almost always the innocent who suffer most.