Who Targeted Ukraine Airlines Flight 752? Iran Shot It Down But There May Be More to the Story

written by philip giraldi


The claim that Major General Qassem Soleimani was a “terrorist” on a mission to carry out an “imminent” attack that would kill hundreds of Americans turned out to be a lie, so why should one believe anything else relating to recent developments in Iran and Iraq? To be sure, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 departing from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on the morning of January 8th with 176 passengers and crew on board was shot down by Iranian air defenses, something which the government of the Islamic Republic has admitted, but there just might be considerably more to the story involving cyberwarfare carried out by the US and possibly Israeli governments.

To be sure, the Iranian air defenses were on high alert fearing an American attack in the wake of the US government’s assassination of Soleimani on January 3rd followed by a missile strike from Iran directed against two US bases in Iraq. In spite of the tension and the escalation, the Iranian government did not shut down the country’s airspace. Civilian passenger flights were still departing and arriving in Tehran, almost certainly an error in judgment on the part of the airport authorities. Inexplicably, civilian aircraft continued to take off and land even after Flight 752 was shot down.

Fifty-seven of the passengers on the flight were Canadians of Iranian descent, leading Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to point the finger both at the Iranian government for its carelessness and also at Washington, observing angrily that the Trump Administration had deliberately and recklessly sought to “escalate tensions” with Iran through an attack near Baghdad Airport, heedless of the impact on travelers and other civilians in the region.

What seems to have been a case of bad judgements and human error does, however, include some elements that have yet to be explained. The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced considerable “jamming” and the planes transponder switched off and stopped transmitting several minutes before the missiles were launched. There were also problems with the communication network of the air defense command, which may have been related.

The electronic jamming coming from an unknown source meant that the air defense system was placed on manual operation, relying on human intervention to launch. The human role meant that an operator had to make a quick judgment in a pressure situation in which he had only moments to react. The shutdown of the transponder, which would have automatically signaled to the operator and Tor electronics that the plane was civilian, instead automatically indicated that it was hostile. The operator, having been particularly briefed on the possibility of incoming American cruise missiles, then fired.

The two missiles that brought the plane down came from a Russian-made system designated SA-15 by NATO and called Tor by the Russians. Its eight missiles are normally mounted on a tracked vehicle. The system includes both radar to detect and track targets as well as an independent launch system, which includes an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system functionality capable of reading call signs and transponder signals to prevent accidents. Given what happened on that morning in Tehran, it is plausible to assume that something or someone deliberately interfered with both the Iranian air defenses and with the transponder on the airplane, possibly as part of an attempt to create an aviation accident that would be attributed to the Iranian government.

The SA-15 Tor defense system used by Iran has one major vulnerability. It can be hacked or "spoofed," permitting an intruder to impersonate a legitimate user and take control. The United States Navy and Air Force reportedly have developed technologies “that can fool enemy radar systems with false and deceptively moving targets." Fooling the system also means fooling the operator. The Guardian has also reported independently how the United States military has long been developing systems that can from a distance alter the electronics and targeting of Iran’s available missiles.

The same technology can, of course, be used to alter or even mask the transponder on a civilian airliner in such a fashion as to send false information about identity and location. The United States has the cyber and electronic warfare capability to both jam and alter signals relating to both airliner transponders and to the Iranian air defenses. Israel presumably has the same ability. Joe Quinn at Sott.net also notes an interested back story to those photos and video footage that have appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere showing the Iranian missile launch, the impact with the plane and the remains after the crash, to include the missile remains. They appeared on January 9th, in an Instagram account called 'Rich Kids of Tehran'. Quinn asks how the Rich Kids happened to be in “a low-income housing estate on the city's outskirts [near the airport] at 6 a.m. on the morning of January 8th with cameras pointed at the right part of the sky in time to capture a missile hitting a Ukrainian passenger plane…?”

Put together the Rich Kids and the possibility of electronic warfare and it all suggests a premeditated and carefully planned event of which the Soleimani assassination was only a part. There have been riots in Iran subsequent to the shooting down of the plane, blaming the government for its ineptitude. Some of the people in the street are clearly calling for the goal long sought by the United States and Israel, i.e. “regime change.” If nothing else, Iran, which was widely seen as the victim in the killing of Soleimani, is being depicted in much of the international media as little more than another unprincipled actor with blood on its hands. There is much still to explain about the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752.

Reprinted with permission from American Herald Tribune.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/january/16/who-targeted-ukraine-airlines-flight-752-iran-shot-it-down-but-there-may-be-more-to-the-story/?fbclid=IwAR27b0eEHG05gvl6bv9icNY-pBBPpqCvDLdRar-_Jk4wXjbx9cR94NrVUVM

Dr. Iman Khosravi's (postdoctoral degree in Remote Sensing Engineering, University of Tehran) notes on the technical investigation of the possibilities of the Ukrainian Boeing crash:

In the Name of God the Most Merciful

While condoling the dear families of those lost, as a former soldier in the Army air defense and a post-doctoral mapping-remote sensing engineer, I will make a few points in simple scientific terms in this regard:

From the perspective of military experience:

1. Iran's air defence is one of the safest, most precise and accurate air defences in the world. When, in the summer of 2014, Iranian air defence struck an Israeli stealth drone (Hermes) above Natanz, or when in this very summer of 2019, it struck a stealth drone (Global Hawk) in the south of the country while not hitting the airplane next to it carrying American troops, which it identified, the precision of our country's air defence was highlighted.

From the perspective of mapping and remote sensing (scientific):

2. Every moving thing or 'bird' has a navigation system (GNSS). What does that mean? Simply put, it means it has a positioning system. For what? To justify (find) its position in space along its intended path every moment.

3. The makers of most ‘birds’, drones, airplanes and remote-sensing and other satellites, justify them based on the Global Positioning System (WGS).

4. GPS satellites are one way of tracking or positioning for these ‘birds'. That is, codes are constantly exchanged between the ‘bird’ and the GPS stations to justify (find) the bird's position along the route.

5. Who is in control of these GPS satellites? NASA. Which means where? The Space Agency of the United States of America. What that means is that this Agency has easy access to all the paths of the 'birds'. It can easily track their positions! And can even easily change their positions! How? As follows: While sending a code the GPS receiver is switched off for some moments or wrong codes are sent to the 'bird', so that the 'bird' errs in identifying its position. An example of this is when America attacked Iraq in the time of Saddam. In the first days of the war, the United States cut off all communications, including radio and telecommunications, between the Iraqi border and central bases, through its GPS navigation system. The central bases thought that the border bases had fallen and the border bases thought that something had happened to the central bases. This was one of the most important reasons for the falling of Saddam's Iraq.

6. Because of the above, most countries, especially Iran, have tried since several years to adopt a domestic positioning system which is independent from GPS, at least for their military 'birds' and missiles (imagine a missile, using the Global Positioning System, is fired from a place to a target - by tampering with its position its course can be changed or even redirected to its origin!) Initially, they wanted to use the positioning system of other countries like Russia, which is the main competitor to America, (the Glonas Positioning System), but the same problem could have arisen, because the system would not be in our own hands. For this reason the domestic positioning system was taken seriously and achieved significant success, such that in the war with ISIS the Russians were desperately seeking to use our drone technology. Because our drones were such that they were tracking the American drones while they were not aware of our drones. Also, perhaps one of the reasons that our missiles were not tracked by US air defences was because of the same domestic positioning system of our missiles.

7. Where is the Boeing plane made? The United States of America. And its positioning system is also based on the global position taken from GPS.

Now let's return to the incident in question:

8. There is one suspicious point in this event. And that is that they all admit that the plane, shortly after taking off from Imam Khomeini airport, was going in the direction of Ukraine, when it suddenly turned towards the airport itself and, according to the General Staff, took on a position of attack towards one of the Sepah military centers. This is what caused the air defence to fire a missile at the target (to be noted by those who operate air defences based on radar screens).

9. Based on all of the above, it is not far-fetched that the aircraft's navigation system may have been tampered with by the US in order to shift the aircraft's position towards an Iranian military site and result in what happened. (For example, recall the striking of the Boeing airplanes with the Twin Towers on the 11th of September 2001, which later became clear that the aircraft did not have a pilot and hit the towers automatically). What that means is that in addition to these 170 dear passengers, a military base and more people would have been martyred. (I recommend that Iran completely bans Boeing from our sky and airports)...

10. That the US itself (the President of the United States) was the first country to comment on this and say that the work was undoubtedly that of the Iranian Armed Forces itself, makes our suspicion more likely. That is, they had already planned for this task from before and wanted to make a huge military and humanitarian blow to our country without the least military cost (without the use of their weapons and planes). They wanted, in any case, to damage Iran and Iran's image - if the plane had hit the target that would have been a victory for them (because it had been done by an American Boeing plane and America would have been proud of itself for that), and now that it did not hit and Iran struck it down, Iran's image will get ruined. From the criminal America we know, such a crime does not seem far-fetched.

11. Ultimately, we must wait for the plane black box, so that the real reason can be better understood.

And the end is better for the pious

Who wrote these jargons and bullcraps? Please there are news that are not worth posting, this is total crap.

Incompetent Iranian SAM operator made a panic error and nothing jamming of equipment got to do with it.

When Iran shut down U.S. Stealth Drone, U.S. did not jam the Iranian radar to prevent it from hitting their drone, now Iran shut down Ukrainian Airline, inside Iran Airspace and this now turns to jamming?

All these conspiracy theories by does who do not know how SAMs work, Please let me trade Asian Sections in peace without having to read all these annoying jarhons.

Blackeuropean:
Who wrote these jargons and bullcraps? Please there are news that are not worth posting, this is total crap.

Incompetent Iranian SAM operator made a panic error and nothing jamming of equipment got to do with it.

When Iran shut down U.S. Stealth Drone, U.S. did not jam the Iranian radar to prevent it from hitting their drone, now Iran shut down Ukrainian Airline, inside Iran Airspace and this now turns to jamming?

All these conspiracy theories by does who do not know how SAMs work, Please let me trade Asian Sections in peace without having to read all these annoying jarhons.

While the world are switching warfare into cyberspace war, Naija is still in the mentality of stone age.

Save your breathe. I pray the U.S. and her allies do not temper with the result of analysis of the black box. Truth will eventually be out.

Nothing is far fetched these dayz!!
Almost anything could be with the right technology*

Not saying ure wrong oo, but if all that indeed happened, won't the Iranians have blamed in on the US? Even with a slightest chance that interference occurred.
I