Iran tries to make amends for shooting down Ukrainian Boeing
While supplying kamikaze drones to Russia

INTERVIEWS  09 January 2023 - 16:56

Iran has launched legal proceedings on the fact of the crash of an aircraft of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) in the sky over Tehran in January 2020. This statement came on January 8 from the Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri.

"The tragic incident, as a result of which a Ukrainian passenger plane was shot down on January 8, 2020, deeply shocked both the people of the Islamic Republic and representatives of its authorities and armed forces. The court case on this incident has been opened and is at the trial stage," Bagheri said.

The head of the General Staff also stressed that the cause of the plane crash was "the special conditions prevailing in Iran in the field of security", as well as "an erroneous decision taken by the units of the defence department".

The Iranian news agency IRNA reported that to commemorate the third anniversary of the crash of the Ukrainian plane near Tehran, the provincial authorities "showered the crash site with flowers".

A memorial ceremony to mark the Ukrainian plane's tragedy was held in the city of Shahriyar, west of Tehran.

It should be noted that on January 8, 2020, the Boeing 737-8KV airliner of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) was operating the scheduled international flight PS752 on the route Tehran-Kyiv. In about 3 minutes after take-off due to human error, it was hit by two surface-to-air missiles, fired from the Iranian Air Force base, and crashed to earth 15 kilometres from Tehran airport. All 176 passengers were killed. The victims were mainly from Ukraine and Iran, but also Canada, Afghanistan, Britain, and Sweden. In a 285-page final report dated 2021, Iran announced it would pay each affected family more than 120,000 euros in damages, IRNA reported.

According to TASS, on January 11, 2020, the Iranian military announced that it had shot down a Boeing flying near a military facility by mistake, mistaking the plane for an "enemy target." Tehran handed Kyiv a draft technical report on the causes of the crash. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called it an attempt to conceal the true causes of the crash.

Against the background of what is happening with Ukraine today, this whole situation looks quite weird. The Iranian authorities continue to sell combat drones to Russia, which fly daily to destroy peaceful Ukrainians, their homes, and the country's civilian infrastructure, but they consider it normal to try to make amends for the tragic event that happened three years ago. How does one fit in with the other, even amid the leaks published recently that the Russian Federation is going to buy ballistic missiles from Iran – again in order to destroy Ukraine?

And why did Tehran decide that now is the right time to launch a judicial investigation? What is this about? They were in no hurry before. Prominent experts have answered these questions for Caliber.Az.

According to Konstantin Bondarenko, analyst and historian, and head of the Ukrainian Policy Foundation, Iran has decided to take a dual position. On the one hand, it understands that a strategic alliance with Russia is important for it - and not only in the field of the arms trade. Russia is a global ally in the Middle Eastern processes, Russia can mediate in the conflict with Saudi Arabia, and Russia is an opportunity for a coherent energy policy. In addition, an Iranian-Russian alliance is a potential counterweight to a growing Turan alliance, to US and UK interests in the region, and even the possibility of a joint policy towards China.

"But at the same time Iran, in the best traditions of eastern diplomacy, is trying to show that it is not an enemy of Europe and that it is taking a neutral position on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Unwilling to be seen as a party to the conflict, Iran took a three-year-old case out from the archives and decided to review the Boeing shooting down. It is a telling move, with more politics than a desire for the truth. But in any case, the message will be decoded by the leading states as follows: we do not support Russia or Ukraine, and the fact that we sell weapons to Russia is nothing personal, only business," Bondarenko believes.

Ilya Kusa, an expert on the Middle East region and an analyst at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, notes the very complexity of the topic as to why Tehran decided to start legal proceedings over the shooting down of the civilian plane now.

"Either they waited for the date, because they like to do everything by dates, or because the investigation is over and the time for proceedings is objectively approaching, or because there were some negotiations with Ukraine and it was decided somehow to get this case rolling. Because in the last year and a half, there was not much news on this issue. So, any of the above-mentioned circumstances pushed to start raising this issue again.

But I do not see any contradiction in Iran's behavior in connection with its arms deliveries to Russia. The fact is that bilateral relations consist of different contexts and different processes which may be absolutely contradictory in nature. That is again, bilateral relations are never monotonous, always the same. Therefore, relations between Ukraine and Iran are very different, and they have always been so - there have been both cooperation and conflicts.

At the moment they are all the more complicated by the war because this factor is strongly influencing since Iran has indeed seriously strengthened its military and technical cooperation with Russia in recent months. On the other hand, it is clear that the issue of this Boeing tragedy is still unresolved regardless of what is happening between Iran and Russia. However, even though the Iranian-Ukrainian relations have significantly deteriorated, they are still there, they continue, and they will develop further," Ilia Kusa believes.

Caliber.Az