The escalation between the United States and Iran has claimed 176 collateral victims, in a military coup that has so far been described as calibrated. Passengers and crew members who died on Wednesday, January 8, in the crash of a Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) Boeing 737 after taking off from Tehran airport, were killed by a missile Iranian anti-aircraft, according to American intelligence. The incident came hours after a ballistic missile salvo ordered by the Islamic Republic against US military installations in Iraq. Reprisals against the assassination, in Baghdad, five days earlier, of the Iranian general Ghassem Soleimani, commander of the force of the Revolutionary Guards, in an American strike.
Thursday was marked by growing doubts about the accidental nature of the disaster. In the wake of Newsweek, the American media disseminated anonymous quotes from intelligence officials, while photos of exterior impacts of shrapnel on the cabin, or remains of a Tor missile near the crash, were published on social media. Then a first confirmation came, through Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, including 63 nationals, many of them binational, who died in the crash.
"Scientifically, it is impossible that a missile hit the Ukrainian plane, such rumors are illogical"
"We have information from multiple sources, including our allies and our own services," showing that the plane was shot down "By an Iranian surface-to-air missile"Trudeau said at a press conference before adding that the act may not have been intentional. Earlier, President Donald Trump expressed his nuances on the theory of a technical problem, first put forward by Tehran. "I feel like something terrible has happened", said the President of the United States, raising the possibility of a mistake.
In Tehran, we remained on the defensive after the declarations of the Canadian Prime Minister. Iran's foreign ministry on Thursday denounced "Questionable staging" and called on Ottawa to share its information with the Iranian commission of inquiry into the incident. "Scientifically, it is impossible that a missile hit the Ukrainian plane, such rumors are illogical"said Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran’s civil aviation organization, quoted by ISNA.
