Report: Rouhani Threatened to Resign after IRGC Covered up Downing of Ukrainian Plane
Iran
London - New York - Asharq Al-Awsat
For three days, Iranian military officials knew they had shot down a Ukrainian jetliner while the government issued false statements, denying any responsibility in the January 8 crash, The New York Times reported. Iran had just fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at American forces, the country was on high alert for an American counterattack, and the Iranian military was warning of incoming cruise missiles. The officer tried to reach the command center for authorization to shoot but couldn’t get through. So he fired an antiaircraft missile. Then another. The plane, which turned out to be a Ukrainian jetliner with 176 people on board, crashed and exploded in a ball of fire. President Hassan Rouhani’s government was publicly denying that the plane had been shot down because Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) were covering it up. When they finally told him, he gave them an ultimatum: come clean or he would resign, The New York Times said. Only then, 72 hours after the plane crashed, did Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, step in and order the government to acknowledge its fatal mistake, the newspaper’s report said. Iran said last week that it had asked the US and French authorities for equipment to download information from the black boxes on the downed airliner, potentially angering countries which want the recorders analyzed abroad. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, which lost 57 of its citizens, said Iran did not have the ability to read the data and he demanded the cockpit and flight recorders should be sent to France. Ukraine has urged Iran to return the black boxes from the US-built Boeing 737 flown by Ukraine International Airlines. Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said returning the boxes would show that Iran was committed to an unbiased investigation of the tragedy. “If the appropriate supplies and equipment are provided, the information can be taken out and reconstructed in a short period of time,” Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said in its second preliminary report on the disaster released last Monday. A list of equipment Iran needs has been sent to French accident agency BEA and the US National Transportation Safety Board, Reuters quoted the Iranian aviation body as saying.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2101271/report-rouhani-threatened-resign-after-irgc-covered-downing-ukrainian-plane
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