Iran's admission over Flight 752, days on

What did the world know about the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on 13 January 2020? By then, the main question of responsibility had been answered, and the days before it showed how quickly Iran's position changed.

The Boeing 737-800 was on a scheduled flight from Tehran to Kyiv. On 8 January 2020 it was shot down shortly after takeoff by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and all 176 people on board were killed.

From denial to admission

On 9 January 2020, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, told a news conference it was too early to draw definitive conclusions that the downing was an act of war. He also condemned Iran's attack on U.S. bases in Iraq.

On 10 January 2020, after Trudeau suggested that an Iranian missile had brought the plane down, Iranian authorities rejected the theory. The head of Iran's civil aviation body said he was certain the aircraft had not been hit by a missile. He continued to assert that the cause was mechanical failure.

The position was reversed the next day. On 11 January 2020, Iran's president officially acknowledged that the country's armed forces had mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian airliner, using a missile, near Tehran.

The picture on 13 January 2020

By 13 January 2020 the official account had therefore moved from mechanical failure to a military error acknowledged at the highest level of the Iranian state. The aircraft was operated by a Ukrainian carrier and had been bound for Kyiv, and the Canadian leader's remarks had been among the public statements on the cause of the crash in the days before Tehran's admission.

This retrospective is limited to what was reported by 11 January 2020: the denial of 10 January 2020 and the acknowledgement a day later.