Iran Shot It Down But There May Be More to
the Story
By Philip GiraldiJanuary 20, 2020
"Information
Clearing House" - 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 U.S. and possibly Israeli
governments.
To be sure, the Iranian air defenses were
on high alert fearing an American attack in
the wake of the U.S. government’s
assassination of Soleimani on January 3rd
followed by a missile strike from Iran
directed against two U.S. 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.