In such a situation doesn't everyone know there is a protocol to be followed? We are talking about the armed forces - does not everyone understand (as every nation has an army) that they have a chain of command, rules and a bureaucratic hierarchy which must be followed? The more important something is - especially for a horrific admission such as this - the longer the verification process necessarily takes. If the soldier who had pressed the "fire" button had rushed out of the base and declared to all who would listen, "It was my fault!", he would be treated as a dangerous madman in any nation. However, it is as if some people expected this type of an instantaneous confirmation in the Ukraine Airlines tragedy?
I suggest such impatience - from those who want to get it "now" instead of getting it "right" - has been fostered by a 24/7 news cycle which does not want to hear about the need for interviewing those involved, testing and calibrating equipment, reviewing all the data, etc. Three days, well, I just find it hard to believe that anyone would find that unacceptable? Some people - due to their quite understandable grief over this tragedy - are being unreasonable, but many Western media and politicians do not have such sincere motivations for such a complaint.
A verification process like I have described would have been an acceptable delay - at least to me - under normal circumstances. Here, of course, the Western Mainstream Media is doing all they can to sweep under the rug the fact that Iran was in a state of high military alert provoked entirely by the recent assassination of Iran's top general, a top Iraqi general and retaliatory missile strikes which had been fired by Iran just hours before the plane's downing.
Iran's retaliation for the appalling assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was nowhere near as severe as US aggression merited. Washington tapped CNN to produce a propaganda report entirely designed to give the impression that the missile attack was not significant, but the point was not proportional revenge: the Leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution Seyyed Ali Khamenei said it was merely to give a "slap in the face". Therefore, nobody can say that Iran overreacted. However, the assassination proves to many in Iran that Washington is hell-bent on fomenting war with Iran. "High alert" is no exaggeration of the tensions at the time of the take-off of the Ukrainian airliner.
Therefore, it is incredible that Iran is somehow being portrayed as being wholly responsible for the tragedy of the Ukraine plane downing? The bulk of the condemnation for the tragedy must obviously be aimed at Washington for creating this atmosphere which produced the tragedy, if anyone truly cares about justice.
Unfortunately, I am reminded of the old saying: "Everybody talks about peace, nobody talks about justice." The incident is being used as the latest plank in the 40-year Iranophobia campaign, sadly.
Is the alleged 'cover-up' occurring in between the public lamentations and self-criticisms?
The Ukrainian airliner downing shattered the peace of many families, but what we can say with total certainty today is that nobody in Iran wanted the destruction of a civilian airliner.
It was US President George Bush who famously refused to apologize, not Rouhani, but there are too many obviously sincere apologies from every level of Iran's government. What cover-up? The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards testified to Parliament, "I swear to almighty God that I wished I were in that plane and had crashed with them". Two days earlier the chief aerospace commander told a press conference, "I wish I was dead and such an incident hadn't happened".
Where is the defiance, deflection and distraction of this alleged "cover-up"?
There is obviously - at all levels of the Iranian government and military - sadness, regret and complete acceptance of responsibility. I feel sorry for those Iranian soldiers involved because they express such feelings of culpability - if you feel sorry for George Bush, or the soldiers he decorated, I don't know what basis you have for such feelings because they were never uttered?
The 1988 IranAir flight was downed in the final month of the Iran-Iraq War. The US shot down the Iranian plane as an expression of their frustration that their proxy war with their ally-dictator-mass murderer Saddam Hussein had failed. It was a message that Washington would still act with murderous impunity, and that their war was not finished - they have stayed true to this murderous posture all these decades hence. Compare that with the situation in 2020.
Despite the illegal, inhuman slaying of Soleimani Iran is not about to be baited into war, which was Washington's true intention. Tehran is not going to put all of Iran - and the region - at risk over the decision of an idiot/assassin, who is trying to distract from his impeachment trial (as well as from the indictment trial of his ally in Tel Aviv) and who may be back on reality television in 11 months.
The Ukraine Airlines flight was - unlike for Washington in 1988 - undoubtedly not a provocation, nor an incitement to continued conflict, assassination and war.
This is the reality which the West cannot see, as they are blinded by Islamophobia and Iranophobia: the Iranian government showed the humane response which one would expect of a truly progressive government, which they are. They did not respond with belligerence, defiance and a Washington-style cover-up. But the Iranian government gets no credit in the West ever - it's their editorial policy.
Frankly, while this is obviously a tragedy, I want more information as to how it happened: I find it extremely coincidental that the plane came from Ukraine, which has undoubtedly been the site of (yet another) far-right coup/civil war supported by Washington. I am not disparaging all Ukraine, of course, but it's fair to assume that the Pentagon has unlimited access to Ukrainian planes as well as a history of using cyber warfare and sabotage against Iran.
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