Iran lied for days over crash, admits diplomat
IRAN’S top diplomat acknowledged yesterday that Iranians ‘were lied to’ for days, after the Islamic Republic accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner.
The admission came as new surveillance footage purported to show two surfaceto-air missiles 20 seconds apart shred the plane and kill all 176 people on board.
The downing of the Ukraine International Airlines flight last week came amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US over its unravelling nuclear deal.
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking at a summit in New
Delhi, became the first official to describe Iran’s earlier claims as a lie.
‘In the last few nights, we’ve had people in the streets of Tehran demonstrating against the fact that they were lied to for a couple of days,’ Mr Zarif said.
Mr Zarif went on to praise Iran’s military for being ‘brave enough to claim responsibility early on’.
The crash, and subsequent days of Iranian denials that a missile had downed the plane, sparked angry protests in a country already on edge as its economy struggles under crushing American sanctions.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran reached a fever pitch two weeks ago with the American drone strike in Baghdad that killed powerful Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani.
Iran for days afterwards insisted a technical fault downed the Ukraine International Boeing 737-800.
It was not until Western governments, and leaders including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, went public with their suspicions that the plane had been shot down that Iran was forced to admit it fired on the plane.
Not admitting the plane had been shot down ‘was for the betterment of our country’s security, because if we had said this, our air defence system would have become crippled and our guys would have had doubted everything,’ said General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guard’s aerospace programme, in television footage aired yesterday.
Gen Hajizadeh only days earlier apologised on state television and said: ‘I wish I were dead.’