
U.S. Believes Ukraine Plane Was Shot Down by Iran: U.S. Official - po_
https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-jet-was-on-fire-before-crash-iran-says-11578558346
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gnicholas
from the CNN article: _One possibility being considered is that an Iranian
missile unit saw something on their radar, thought they were under attack and
fired._

This is one danger of brinksmanship, which is that people's fingers are
hovering a little too close to the trigger. If that is indeed what happened
here, we can only hope that the powers that be realize that their saber-
rattling was a cause of these deaths.

~~~
mthoms
Exactly. It reminds me not only of the Ukrainian airliner shot down by
Russian-backed forces in 2014 but also of the Iranian Airlines jet shot down
by the USS Vincennes in 1988. So tragic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655)

~~~
DerpyBaby123
That is not what OP proposed, please comment in good faith and avoid strawmen

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gnicholas
I think you replied to the wrong comment.

~~~
metalliqaz
The comment he meant to reply to seems to have been removed. It was something
like "would you rather we let Iran kill Americans" or some BS like that.

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ra7
The interesting thing is NYT reporting that the aircraft had turned back
towards Tehran airport before crashing. That could be a sign of technical
troubles or the aircraft was warned to return to the airport because of active
AA systems in the area.

~~~
sdinsn
The NYT stated that the aircraft turned back towards the airport _after_ it
was hit by the missile. They said that it continued flying for "several
minutes" before exploding and crashing.

~~~
hackeraccount
If that was the case it would have been horrifying.

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duxup
I was thinking with all the military action going on, someone had to have
pretty good coverage looking for missile launches.

It raises the question how you even can manage having an active / ready to
fire anti-air system online and commercial planes active?

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dsalzman
"Of the 176 people on board, 82 were Iranian, 63 were Canadian and 11 were
Ukrainian (including nine crewmembers), along with 10 Swedish, seven Afghan
and three German nationals. None survived." What a tragedy.

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mech1234
I encourage everyone to read AV Herald- a site closely linked to the aviation
community. Their coverage of this developing story is impressive.

[http://avherald.com/h?article=4d1aea51&opt=0](http://avherald.com/h?article=4d1aea51&opt=0)

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kjhughes
CNN article has no paywall:

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/is-iran-ukraine-
plan...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/is-iran-ukraine-
plane/index.html)

The CNN article says that Newsweek was first to report the story:

[https://www.newsweek.com/iranians-shot-down-ukraine-
flight-m...](https://www.newsweek.com/iranians-shot-down-ukraine-flight-
mistake-sources-1481313)

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sleepysysadmin
Plane took off and according to Iranians had a 1 in a million chance engine
fire. The plane continues to fly, it has multiple engines for redundancy.

The video showing a missile hitting a plane and later catching fire and
crashing. Pictures of a missile at the crash site; shrapnel damage on the
plane for sure. Unclear if it's legit or not, but lets say it's legit. It was
shot down.

If it were Iran who shot it down. Why were there multiple people awake in the
middle of the night recording a dark sky on the off chance Iran shoots their
own plane down? If it were the Iran government they wouldn't want evidence
like that.

Why were the Americans so quick at being able to say Iran shot down the plane?

Is it perhaps because (label group here) had an Iranian AA missile to use in
Tehran. Had their agents record the missile attack so that they could blame
Iran?

That's the more likely story.

Interesting how Trump was very untrumplike calling for peace earlier.

Interesting how there were no American citizens on that plane.

Not sure who did it.

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dekhn
stop with conspiracy theories.

