
Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says - colinprince
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-jetliner-unintentionally-shot-down-1.5423608
======
cmdshiftf4
What an absolute tragedy. Well done to Iran for coming forward, admitting it
and expressing their regrets over it. It's a stark cry from the utter denial
others have expressed when similar accidents have happened, and astronomically
further than when George H. W. Bush proclaimed "I will never apologize for the
United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-
America kind of guy." when the Navy shot down Iran Air flight 655 in '88.

This coming forward will save the families and nations involved time and
effort, and hopefully bring closure all the more quickly for them.

~~~
aaomidi
No this isn't well done.

It took them three days to say this. How did it take them three days to
realize they shot a missile? Especially since they had a denial campaign going
on for three goddamn days.

This was just external pressure on Iran forcing them to do this. If this
flight wasn't an international one it would've been swept under the rug.

~~~
kumarvvr
Three days is insanely fast for a _nation_

Think of how many level of people are there.

There are the guys that shot the missile. The ones that command those guys,
the ones that command those and commanders above those.

In the chaos of the tragedy, no body wants to open their mouth, in case they
are executed for saying something that is against the direction which the
nations top leaders want to take.

Then come the top leaders. With the escalating tensions with the US, having
recently sent a barrage of missiles to Iraq, they are holding on to the horses
of the country, on the edge of a cliff.

They have to discuss and deliberate a myriad of issues that are consequential
to their every word.

They cannot be too rushed to say that they shot the plane down. It might
create a chance for the US to spin this as a deliberate murder.

And all these are humans. Humans that run nations, whose millions of peoples
lives are at stake.

Three days is perfectly OK.

I am glad Iran is honest enough to admit it's mistake, unlike Russia, for
example.

~~~
wil93
> Three days is perfectly OK.

Three days of silence? Yes. Three days of active denial? Hell no.

The Head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization had this to say: «The version
that the plane was shot down by a rocket cannot be true under any
circumstances … it is impossible from the scientific point of view.»

If they really wanted to tell the truth after some days then why wouldn't he
just shut up in the meantime?

~~~
kumarvvr
In this context, remaining silent would be tantamount to acceptung fault.

However, they could have said even they were not sure, and that they are
investigating.

------
mthoms
There's a pretty good short documentary about the USS Vincennes accidental
shooting down of an Iranian commercial flight in 1988. Notably, it discusses
the psychological phenomenon of "scenario fulfillment" that allegedly
contributed to the disaster.

I'll leave it to more informed commenters here to discuss whether or not such
a thing actually exists. But regardless, it's an interesting watch.

[https://youtu.be/lRJnumxuHwY](https://youtu.be/lRJnumxuHwY)

And before someone pounces, I'm not bringing this incident up due to any
ideological "anti-US" agenda or some such silliness. I just think the doc is
interesting, relevant, and worthy of discussion.

~~~
tunesmith
With that in mind, it's even more amazing we've avoided full-on nuclear war
multiple times.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Iran doesn't have the capability to deliver their nukes. No ICBMs capable of
reaching the US, they can only try to use a long range bomber plane.

[https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2017/9/23/75c570944...](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2017/9/23/75c570944a324dd7bb03afaf28abc671_6.jpg)

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
They also don't have nukes, making the lack of missiles somewhat secondary.

------
cjbprime
It's interesting that for once, the immediate rumor take within an hour of the
event (e.g. in the HN thread about the video) was simply correct.

~~~
nkurz
I agree it's interesting. But since I haven't seen it mentioned here elsewhere
in this thread, I'll bring up the alternate theory that this is a "limited
hangout". In this version, Iran starts by professing complete innocence, but
eventually confesses to shooting down the plane by mistake, whereas in
actuality they shot down the plane intentionally. I have estimate of the
likelihood of this explanation, but if it were true, I think it would be a
very effective strategy of misdirection.

The main argument against this interpretation is that Iran would have no
reason to intentionally shoot down an innocent airliner. I don't know that
this is true. One theory is that there were people on the plane they wanted
dead even at significant cost in embarassment. This doesn't seem impossible.
Another theory is that they shooting was done intentionally by a faction
trying to make Iran look bad, and Iran decided that calling it a mistake was
less embarrassing than calling it treason or mutiny.

Anyway, my point isn't that there is _necessarily_ some deeper conspiracy,
only that it may still be too early to claim that the initial conspiracy
theory was entirely correct, or offers a full explanation.

~~~
cjbprime
Yes, fair enough. I think our immediate theories on seeing the video didn't
try to establish the level of intentionality, but were still correct about the
basic facts known so far ("uh, that plane looks like it got shot down by a
missile, probably by Iran").

------
seibelj
This is why my number 1 fear for the destruction of humanity is not climate
change, plague, asteroids, or super volcanoes.

It’s nuclear weapons. One wrong “Oops!” by the military and the entire world
self-destructs in mutually assured annihilation. Absolutely depressing.

~~~
perl4ever
One oops and maybe something gets nuked, but I don't think it makes any sense
to worry about the whole world being destroyed. Why would they? I mean, if the
US was hit, it would be like 9/11 only bigger, and I'm sure people would be
talking about glass parking lots, but why would _all_ the missiles be launched
towards everywhere? Who wants to destroy the world and why wouldn't they have
done it already? Same goes for any other country.

~~~
csallen
_> Who wants to destroy the world and why wouldn't they have done it already?_

Who wants to shoot down a civilian airliner and why wouldn't they have done it
already?

It's not about the _desire_ to destroy humanity. It's about the catastrophic
scenarios that can arise when nuclear armed countries think they're under
nuclear attack and start getting jumpy about counter strikes or even pre-
emptive strikes. The only sensible strategy is, basically, to Launch All The
Things and wipe out your enemy before they can do the same.

~~~
seer
I think MAD was an effective strategy when you had one and only one sure
adversary. Only one other country that was willing and able to come at you
with nukes.

Today’s world - say someone nuked Moscow - who would the russian nukes be set
to fire on? USA, China, Germany? If it was a single nuke it most probably is
from a terrorist / under cover organization from one of the smaller nations
Russia has wronged in the past who had gotten their hands on a nuke somehow.
And Russia’s calculus is relatively simple. Who has the USA wronged recently?
Quite a lot of players outside of China, Russia, Europe would like to see
USA’s demise. So who should the USA retaliate on?

I highly doubt that a MAD doctrine is still in effect. That’s why nuclear subs
are such an attractive weapon - you can wait and see who your enemy is, and
then glass the bastards days / months later.

~~~
true_religion
We know thanks to 9/11 that if the US is attacked it will retaliate against
it's historic regional enemies without bothering you wait for confirmation or
proof.

I bet if the US were nuked they would say it was Iran and North Korea working
in sync and try to find confirmation in the ruins of a devastating counter
strike.

~~~
perl4ever
Perhaps, so in that case, why would you expect the world to be blown to
pieces?

~~~
true_religion
I never said that. Maybe someone else in the thread did though.

~~~
perl4ever
I didn't say you said that, I prompted you for whether you agree with the
statement.

------
api
That seems very likely. They probably had anti-aircraft and anti-missile
missile systems fully armed and something either automatically mis-categorized
the aircraft as a bomber or missile and shot at it or someone got nervous and
trigger happy.

~~~
serf
you're probably right -- but the fact that a missile can fire automatically
with either 1): inaccurate confidence in the target being what they think it
is or 2) an improper confidence threshold allowing for the misclassification
of an airliner as a missile, is pretty scary.

One likes to think that automatic missiles should be fairly accurate and
confident in their assessments.

My question i've wondered : was the sensitivity deliberately set very high so
as to provide counter-attacks no matter what? If that's the case, isn't it
more than accidental?

~~~
ethbro
If a strike aircraft were that close to a sensitive military installation (by
accounts: missile R&D facility) then it could launch weapons at any second.

There likely wasn't "human-scale" time to confirm identity. And specifically
against a US adversary with stealth technology, it would make sense to have
automated air defense systems on a hair trigger and human air defense systems
with extremely liberal RoE.

What seems like it should have happened is that the international airport
grounded all outbound traffic and parked all non-emergency inbound traffic in
holding, until such time as Iranian air defenses could relax their posture to
guarantee safety.

~~~
Stratoscope
> _extremely liberal RoE_

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, "RoE" stands for "Rules of Engagement".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_engagement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_engagement)

------
nl
So tragic, and I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake.
It's good to see both sides walking back from war.

Edit: the voting behavior of this is pretty extreme, but I don't even know
why. Do people think it isn't good they admitted it? Or is it simply "Iran
should never get credit for anything"? Or is it "of course they had to" (which
is clearly not the case, as the MH17 and initial denials around the shoot down
of Korean Air 007 and Iran Air 655 shows)

~~~
awb
> I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake.

They denied it up until a few hours ago even after the video evidence first
dropped. After a bunch of countries said they had intelligence that it was
shot down they walked back their story.

~~~
mthoms
They denied it at first, yes. But they were also surprisingly open to allowing
foreign investigators on site. They even agreed to give the black boxes over
to the Ukrainians.

If they were trying to hide something I feel like they would have handled it
much differently. Like, for instance how the Russian-backed forces acted when
they did the same thing in 2014. Deny, deflect, deny, repeat.

The truth would have come out eventually in Iran. Video or not. After all,
this incident happened over a populated area with the worlds best intelligence
apparatus _laser focused_ on it.

~~~
dole
“A senior administration official said Friday that he thought the Iranians
wanted American investigators there to keep up the appearance that they did
not know what had caused the crash.”

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/middleeast/missile-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/middleeast/missile-
iran-plane-crash.html)

~~~
mthoms
That would have gone terribly. The Iranians aren't _that_ stupid.

What I think likely happened is that the Iranian aviation authority was misled
by their own government and actually believed it was an accident. At least at
first.

------
Gatsky
I’m no fan of what Trump did. But after a lot of sabre rattling and threats
against the US, Iran holds a state funeral where innocent Iranians get crushed
to death, launches a token missile strike, then incinerates a bunch of
innocent Iranians by accident. How many own goals can you kick in one week?

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
I don't get what you are comparing? Trump's actions were deliberate, and
almost universally acknowledged as misguided, dangerous, and foolish (with the
reneging of a working deal the first and largest blunder).

Iran, under pressure, made a mistake. An accident happens. I don't see how one
assigns some score to these events, yet your comments reads like "they deserve
a few more assassinations and maybe a bit of bombardment for being so stupid
as to show nerves when attacked by the fragile masculinity of a superpower in
decline".

~~~
Gatsky
I’m comparing Iran to other countries that can safely organise a funeral and
don’t shoot down planes because they are ‘nervous’.

Yes Trump’s actions are deplorable, I agree.

------
omilu
Iran can _NEVER_ have a nuclear weapon. Just nope.

~~~
sbmthakur
Yes. Considering the level of incompetency in Iranian military, the first
thing they should do is stop the nuke program and focus on reforming their
military.

------
dilap
Why the scare quotes? I think we can be pretty confident that Iran did not do
this on purpose.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Every time a BBC link is posted this comes up. BBC does not use scare quotes
but BBC prefers (requires?) important/central descriptive or modifiers to be
directly quoted, even when they’re single words.

~~~
dilap
Headline: HN user dilap claims BBC quoting style is “confusing”

Subhead: Offers “thanks” to ComputerGuru

~~~
ComputerGuru
I think the Onion does the same thing ;)

------
AnimalMuppet
Horribly tragic. But let those who have never shot down a civilian airliner in
error be the first to throw stones...

~~~
Aeolun
Not like throwing stones will have any effect at this point. Iran is already
pretty well covered in them.

~~~
bigiain
"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War
IV will be fought with sticks and stones." \-- Albert Einstein

~~~
Aeolun
Yeah. I tried to say that Iran has been sanctioned with so many measures for
so long now that anything more we add won’t really make a difference, but I
guess that went wrong :)

------
tus88
As if there was any doubt about this conclusion.

------
aaron695
We live in a world where we punish for incorrectly jumping to conclusions.

But we don't punish for not stating correct conclusions when things happen.

Which seems to be a fault in the way things work.

People who go with cowardice, of lets not talk to soon, or don't speculate, or
just tow official lines rule. It's why we had Weapons of Mass Destruction.
It's why Science has the replication issues. It's not a small thing.

~~~
mola
Speculation is good, when done by people with proper knowledge and
information. Anyone can be correct in hindsight, just by pure 50% chance.

If we start punishing ANYONE with a speculation regarding ANY situation, we'll
end up both punishing everyone, and be swamped with uninformed noise.

we do punish informed and knowledgeable people when they don't speak up, this
is usually the basis for negligence law suits.

