by Kathy DiNuzzo and Biodun Iginla, The Economist Intelligence Unit News Analysts
The disaster is a blow to Iran’s efforts to win international sympathy in its confrontation with America
“WE HAVE INTELLIGENCE from multiple sources including our allies and our own intelligence,” declared Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, speaking on January 9th of the loss of a Ukrainian airliner that crashed in Tehran in the early hours of the previous day, killing 63 Canadians and 113 others. “The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile (SAM). This may well have been unintentional.” Mr Trudeau added that “the evidence and conclusions are strong enough for me to share them with Canadians”.
The disclosure will come as a blow to the Iranian regime. To the world, it had cast itself as the victim of aggression after America’s assassination of its top general, Qassem Suleimani, on January 3rd. At home, it portrayed itself as a strong regional power, with capable forces able to deliver a prompt and precise ballistic-missile blow to American bases in Iraq. Now it risks being cast as both reckless and incompetent.
Blame the fog of war, perhaps. The plane was hit not long after 6am local time, just four hours after Iran had fired 22 missiles towards American bases in Iraq, in what turned out to be largely symbolic retaliation for General Suleimani’s assassination. Iranian defences were presumably on the alert for American reprisals for the missile strikes. “It's precisely the kind of mistake that happens when military units are on guard against being attacked,” tweeted Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the Middlebury Institute.
Iran’s response to the disaster had already aroused some disquiet. It was quick to blame a mechanical fault. Though the Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737-800’s black-box flight recorders were soon recovered, it did not offer to share them with American or other Western investigators, who are often asked to help, and invited in the Ukrainian authorities instead. Only after reports emerged of the shooting-down did it announce it had invited Boeing to join the investigation. Several photographs of unknown provenance and veracity earlier circulated on social media appearing to show the guidance system of a Russian-made SA-15 missile in a garden near the crash site. On January 9th Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said that Ukrainian investigators were looking into the matter. Iran continues to reject suggestions that it shot down the plane. “Scientifically, it is impossible...and such rumours are illogical,” declared Ali Abedzadeh, the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation.
But Mr Trudeau’s comments followed news reports indicating that American intelligence agencies had detected a pair of missile launches shortly before the plane got into trouble. CBS News reported that American satellites had detected a radar being turned on, infrared blips from two missile launches and then a further blip from the plane’s explosion. America operates a large constellation of reconnaissance satellites, including infrared ones that can detect the heat signature of even small missile launches; the satellites would probably have been watching the region closely in order to detect Iranian missile launches towards American bases in the region. America also intercepted incriminating Iranian communications, according to the New York Times, which also published video footage which appears to show the missile intercepting the aircraft.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s principal military force, operates the SA-15 as part of its own air-defence network, separate from the regular military system, said IHS Markit, a company that provides defence and geopolitical analysis, in a research note. Iran originally acquired the mobile missiles from Russia in 2007 to provide air cover over armoured and mechanised military formations, but used them to protect nuclear sites, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank. The system, which consists of eight missiles on a tracked vehicle, targets low-flying missiles and aircraft up to about 10,000 metres.
That a civilian passenger jet apparently became a target is an astonishing blunder, says Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London. He notes that the plane was climbing from Tehran airport at low speed and broadcasting a standard radar transponder code visible to air-defence operators. Mr Bronk says that the SA-15 is a “modern system with data-link capabilities that should have ensured operators had a good picture of the airspace traffic around them.” They would have access to the plane’s speed, course and bearing, says Mr Bronk, which should have made it clear that it was a civilian flight. “Much of an air defender's work consists of noticing events out of the ordinary,” notes Thomas Withington, an expert on air defences. “An airliner following established departure procedures for a busy airport such as Tehran, flying the normal traffic pattern, should not have alerted air defenders that anything is amiss.”
It would not be the first time that air-defence units have mistakenly shot down passenger airliners. In 1983 the Soviet Union downed Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it strayed into Soviet airspace at the same time as an American reconnaissance flight, killing all 269 aboard. Five years later the USS Vincennes, an American destroyer, mistook Iran Air Flight 655 for an incoming Iranian warplane and shot it down over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 passengers and crew. The disaster still resonates. On January 6th Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, alluded to it in a tweet. In 2001, during a military exercise, Ukraine’s armed forces mistakenly shot down a Russian airliner returning home from Israel, killing 78 people. More recently in 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was brought down by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, using a Buk missile-launcher provided by Russia.
“The common ingredient in all these situations is there is already a crisis or war going on, and someone gets ambiguous information that is then interpreted in the most threatening light due to the state of high alert,” notes Caitlin Talmadge of Georgetown University. “People shoot first and ask questions later.”
One consequence will be severe disruption to aviation. Several airlines have already suspended flights to Iran but many more may do so until they can be sure that they will not also fall victim to a stray missile. Airlines also suspended flights over Iranian and Iraqi airspace or changed flight paths to avoid the area, making for longer journeys. They will be even more wary now.
The Iranian authorities remain in denial. Ministers have rejected American claims and say any assessment should await the findings from the black boxes. And they continue to play the nationalist card so effectively whipped up for General Suleimani’s huge funeral, reclaiming the streets from anti-government protesters. They have broadcast continuous footage of ballistic missiles launched at American positions in Iraq, with commentary from military strategists claiming that this is the heaviest attack on American soldiers since the second world war (nobody was reported killed). Mr Trump’s lack of a military response despite his bellicose threats, they claim, proves that he has been cowed by Iran.
Iranians, though, are asking a torrent of questions. If the passenger plane really was downed by accident, this would mark the latest in a series of big security errors: had General Suleimani and his guards not been so complacent they might not have laid him open to assassination; had the authorities properly organised his burial, more than 50 mourners in his hometown of Kerman might not have died in a stampede. Perceptions of security lapses, compounded by Mr Trump’s threats to devastate important Iranian sites, have triggered a rare feeling of vulnerability. The cafes are full of normally disengaged Iranians now talking politics.
The passengers’ identity adds to the mounting sense of a tragedy. Of the 82 Iranian dead, more than 60 were said to be postgraduate students heading to colleges in Canada for the start of the new term. Many came from Iran’s leading universities, including Sharif in Tehran, and were said to be top of their field. Others had posted on social media that they were escaping the outbreak of war, and died in their flight. For the regime’s many internal critics, grieving the loss of Iran’s finest, perhaps at the hands of the Iranian state, offers an antidote to the ceremonies for the general. Even in its mourning, the country is divided.
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