[News] Top Iranian military commander killed by air strikes

[vegster]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51055219

Iran mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian plane that crashed on Wednesday near Tehran with 176 people on board, US media report.

US officials say they believe the Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737-800 was hit by a missile, CBS says.

Ukraine earlier said it was examining whether a missile strike brought down the aircraft - but Iran ruled this out.

The crash came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq.

CBS News quoting US intelligence said a satellite detected infrared "blips" of two missile launches, followed by another blip of an explosion.

Meanwhile, Newsweek quoted a Pentagon and a senior US intelligence officials, as well as an Iraqi intelligence official as saying they believed the Ukrainian plane was hit by a Russian-made Tor missile.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said "I have my suspicions" over the plane. "Somebody could have made a mistake," he said.

Trump would know, he's a big reader of history, he will know that US forces shot down an Iranian Airbus mistaking it for a fighter plane and killing all 290 people on board. This is what happens when tensions get ratcheted up, always " collateral damage " for the innocent.

 

[pb21]

How the **** is that only the 2nd news story on the BBC, behind "Royals 'hurt' over Sussexes' announcement"

People care significantly more about the Royals hurt feelings than they do a shot down aeroplane

 

[RossyG]

​

People care significantly more about the Royals hurt feelings than they do a shot down aeroplane

It’s yet unconfirmed whether it was shot down. If/when it is I’m sure it’ll be given prominence.

 

[Wardy's twin]

agree , world on brink of major conflict and 180 people dead in an air crash (irrespective of cause) and the news people are jabbering on about how senior royals are hurt FFS.

 

[dangull]

To be fair it was the first news story on channel 4 news. Now the serious stuff

 

[symyjym]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51055219

Iran mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian plane that crashed on Wednesday near Tehran with 176 people on board, US media report.

US officials say they believe the Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737-800 was hit by a missile, CBS says.

Ukraine earlier said it was examining whether a missile strike brought down the aircraft - but Iran ruled this out.

The crash came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq.

CBS News quoting US intelligence said a satellite detected infrared "blips" of two missile launches, followed by another blip of an explosion.

Meanwhile, Newsweek quoted a Pentagon and a senior US intelligence officials, as well as an Iraqi intelligence official as saying they believed the Ukrainian plane was hit by a Russian-made Tor missile.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said "I have my suspicions" over the plane. "Somebody could have made a mistake," he said.

The stupid thing is that it was flying east from Tehran to the Ukraine and any incoming from the US would have been coming from the west to Tehran.

 

[Wardy's twin]

The stupid thing is that it was flying east from Tehran to the Ukraine and any incoming from the US would have been coming from the west to Tehran.

maybe it had a problem and was trying to return so it would be flying from the west and unexpected....

 

[Bozza]

The stupid thing is that it was flying east from Tehran to the Ukraine and any incoming from the US would have been coming from the west to Tehran.

I'd imagine it was more a case of ground-to-air missiles on some sort of automated function, rather than someone going "I wonder if that slow-moving low-altitude commercial airliner that has just taken off from the airport is an American bomber? Best shoot it down just in case."

 

[Springal]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/video/iran-plane-missile.html

Madness that they flew at night given what was going on. Why did they not make it depart during daylight ?!

 

[Bozza]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/video/iran-plane-missile.html

Madness that they flew at night given what was going on. Why did they not make it depart during daylight ?!

They seem to have quite a high volume of flights right through the night - https://www.tehran-airport.com/departures.php - hard to believe this flight was either the only one or the first one last night.

 

[Psychobilly freakout]

People care significantly more about the Royals hurt feelings than they do a shot down aeroplane

No

The media care significantly more about the royals hurt feelings than they do a shot down aeroplane full of foreign nationals all bar three with foreign heritage I think you will find is the truth.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

No

The media care significantly more about the royals hurt feelings than they do a shot down aeroplane full of foreign nationals all bar three with foreign heritage I think you will find is the truth.

The media are busy with dead cats being thrown down to deflect from what is really going on. The hysteria over the royal family on every channel and radio programme whilst legislation is being passed nobody thought possible just a few years ago.

 

[symyjym]

I'd imagine it was more a case of ground-to-air missiles on some sort of automated function, rather than someone going "I wonder if that slow-moving low-altitude commercial airliner that has just taken off from the airport is an American bomber? Best shoot it down just in case."

I don't know much about air defence systems. It takes humans to set the threat levels, program these systems and even turn them on. When Turkey shot down the Russian jet fighter over Syria I believe was a human decision.

 

[Algernon]

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7HdTwcFJgg/?igshid=1olk482vnapv

 

[portlock seagull]

At PMQ's today Johnson, while skipping direct questions about the American assassination and it's legality in international law, tried to malign Corbyn by saying " he wanted to leave NATO " as if that is relevant to a crisis initiated by a NATO member in the Middle East, far from its normal sphere of operation and influence.

Still, it deflects, confuses and muddies the waters until everyone forgets what the original question was. Johnson has learnt well.

Regardless who’s in the seat down the years, it must be hard pleasing everyone when: intervene, and we’re colonialist, boo hiss it’s none of our business he’s just a poor little terrorist we’re racist imperialists; yet when we don’t, it’s boo hiss why aren’t we doing more to stop the genocidal maniac we created this mess 80 years ago sanctioning independence they’ve had no time to hold elections whatsoever since so still be our fault racist imperialists......don’t you think?!

 

[teammelli]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/video/iran-plane-missile.html

Madness that they flew at night given what was going on. Why did they not make it depart during daylight ?!

Most international flights out of the international airport are overnight, this is to then make connection times elsewhere (or so I have heard); also daytime in summer it gets VERY hot.


Not sure how serious this is, but I don't really appreciate it given the circumstances and the opportunity for a tremendous amount of innocent lives to be lost.
Also, that's Arabic in the background. Different language from a completely different root, different country, different ethnicity, it'd be as random as putting a picture of a Japanese person up for a Korean person because "they look alike"


This is a terrible and horrendous tragedy.
The video online are not consistent with a missile collision: it does not explode mid-air, but rather something catches fire suddenly, the plane veers off, and the crash on the ground creates a large fireball likely from the jetfuel. A missile strike would have created a very large fireball immediately and the plane would not have slowly (though terminally) descended.
The Iranian in the background of the video says "it's caught fire" in Persian, not "it's exploded".
Iranian government has offered to share the black box for analysis with anyone BUT US and Boeing; they specifically said any European country can have access to it. I don't know if there's much hiding like others have suggested. Not trying to be an apologist, everyone is bad in this situation, but just sharing what I heard from the public statements.
I smell something fishy here. My bet (I don't have any evidence for this) is that there was something/someone on board who did this, and this incident was made to create a negative impression of the Iranian government. There is active violent domestic/int'l opposition that, if they had a tipoff the retaliation was coming, could have planned something.
The missile argument just doesn't match what I'm seeing on the video.

 

[Brok]

Most international flights out of the international airport are overnight, this is to then make connection times elsewhere (or so I have heard); also daytime in summer it gets VERY hot.



Not sure how serious this is, but I don't really appreciate it given the circumstances and the opportunity for a tremendous amount of innocent lives to be lost.
Also, that's Arabic in the background. Different language from a completely different root, different country, different ethnicity, it'd be as random as putting a picture of a Japanese person up for a Korean person because "they look alike"


This is a terrible and horrendous tragedy.
The video online are not consistent with a missile collision: it does not explode mid-air, but rather something catches fire suddenly, the plane veers off, and the crash on the ground creates a large fireball likely from the jetfuel. A missile strike would have created a very large fireball immediately and the plane would not have slowly (though terminally) descended.
The Iranian in the background of the video says "it's caught fire" in Persian, not "it's exploded".
Iranian government has offered to share the black box for analysis with anyone BUT US and Boeing; they specifically said any European country can have access to it. I don't know if there's much hiding like others have suggested. Not trying to be an apologist, everyone is bad in this situation, but just sharing what I heard from the public statements.
I smell something fishy here. My bet (I don't have any evidence for this) is that there was something/someone on board who did this, and this incident was made to create a negative impression of the Iranian government. There is active violent domestic/int'l opposition that, if they had a tipoff the retaliation was coming, could have planned something.
The missile argument just doesn't match what I'm seeing on the video.

But the video very clearly shows a missile?

 

[beorhthelm]

i dont know if there's more than one video, the one ive seen shows a light coming in from left, a larger light, then hear retort a couple seconds later. thats a missle. (though i quite ready to believe this shaky cam oddly looking into the night sky is fake...who knows these days).

two stroies from Iranians make it obvious they are covering up. first they claimed immediatly that it was an engine failure, while also saying there was no radio messages and the black boxed was recoverd with some missing data. who can tell that its an engine failure within hour without any data? second, among all stories another came out that no one had seen a rocket plume which would be visible, so cant be missle. but its at night and whos looking at the sky for this? specifically making reference to non-observation as evidence is about as suspcious as you can get.

 

[Hugo Rune]

The video online are not consistent with a missile collision: it does not explode mid-air, but rather something catches fire suddenly, the plane veers off, and the crash on the ground creates a large fireball likely from the jetfuel. A missile strike would have created a very large fireball immediately and the plane would not have slowly (though terminally) descended.

I guess that is where your opinion differs from the NYtimes. It describes a small explosion:

‘A small explosion occurred when what appears to be a missile hit the plane above Parand, a city near the airport, but the plane did not explode, the video showed. The jet continued flying for several minutes and turned back toward the airport.’

If the missile hit the main fuselage where there is no fuel, I think the explosion might have been small. Only when the fuel ignites 30 seconds later do we see the large fire and subsequent fireball on impact. There is a video of a missile strike - hard to ignore that unless it’s fake news.

Appreciate your perspective by the way.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Specifically making reference to non-observation as evidence is about as suspcious as you can get.

Chemical Ali level rhetoric!