After Iran on Jan. 11 admitted “unintentionally” downing Ukrainian passenger plane three days before, a military general went public to explain the “human error” that led to the tragedy that killed 176 people.
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, spoke on Iranian state TV and accepted responsibility for the downing of the plane. According to him, the officer operating a missile launcher spotted a plane and mistook it for a cruise missile.
He said that the operator was obliged to call his coordinators and confirm the attack before firing the missile, but couldn’t because his communication system didn’t work.
“Either the jamming system was busy or the network was busy, it couldn’t communicate in any way,” Hajizadeh was quoted by Iranian media as saying. “In this situation, he had five seconds to make a decision. Unfortunately, he made the bad decision and shot the missile and hit the plane.”
Before Hajizadeh’s statement, some experts suggested the missile launcher had been working in an automatic regime when it shot the Ukrainian plane.
“I wished I was dead and didn’t witness it,” Hajizadeh said he thought when he realized that his subordinates downed a passenger plane.
However, while accepting responsibility for the error, Hajizadeh also blamed the U.S. for “creating tensions” in Iran which he said made Tehran put its defense systems on high alert and led to the tragedy. According to Hajizadeh, the military was receiving reports that missiles were fired at Tehran.
Hajizadeh also claimed that the unnamed operator of the missile launcher told him that his unit requested for the airspace in the area to be closed for civilian planes, but it wasn’t done.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces intended to protect the country’s Islamic republic political system by preventing foreign interference.
