Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said that incorrect settings in Tehran’s air defense system led to the Jan. 9 missile strike that shot down a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing passenger plane, killing all 176 people on board.
Iranian authorities are expected to start decoding the downed plane’s flight records on July 20. However, the Civil Aviation Organization released a July 11 report, stating that “human error” led to the deadly crash. According to the report, the air defense system’s operator forgot to adjust its radar settings after it had been moved to a new position.
The mistake resulted in a 107 degree deviation, causing the plane to be misidentified. While the Ukrainian Boeing was flying out from Imam Airport, 30 kilometers southwest of Tehran, the system marked it as a potentially hostile target approaching Tehran from the southwest.
Upon detecting an unknown object, the operator has to report it to the command center. Instead, the report stated he launched the first missile independently. The system then kept tracking the target and fired again automatically.
Operators are not allowed to fire without a response from the command center, according to the report.
The plane crashed at 6:18 a.m. near the village of Khalaj Abad, 44 kilometers from Tehran.
The effect of the explosion on the aircraft’s fuselage is in line with what could be expected from a missile attack, the Civil Aviation Organization stated.
Even prior to this report, Iran blamed human and communication errors for the destruction of the Ukrainian plane.
On Jan. 11, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace division commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that the missile operator could not call his coordinators before attacking the plane because his communication system didn’t work.
Hajizadeh added that Iran’s defense systems were on high alert because of U.S. aggression.
The deadly crash on Jan. 8 followed Iran’s missile attack on a U.S. air base in Iraq in retaliation for a U.S. drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
After downing the Ukrainian plane, Iran promised to cooperate with Ukraine to investigate the attack and pay out compensation.
However, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Iranian government has been dodging its responsibilities.
“It’s not just that they don’t give us back the black boxes. It’s also about their (other) promises,” Zelensky said in an interview on June 21. “They have to give an official apology. They have to pay adequate compensation.”
