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Flight 752: what the days after the crash showed
Summary
A look back at how Iran's account of the downing of a Ukrainian airliner shifted between 9 and 11 January 2020, as the covered date approached.
What had changed by 15 January 2020, the day this retrospective examines, in the account of why a Ukrainian airliner fell near Tehran? The answer lies in the three days that preceded it.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was a scheduled service from Tehran to Kyiv. On 8 January 2020 the Boeing 737-800 was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 people on board.
From caution to denial
On 9 January, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference that 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.
The next day, 10 January, Trudeau suggested the plane had been brought down by an Iranian missile. Iranian authorities rejected that. The head of Iran's civil aviation authority said he was certain no missile had hit the aircraft and continued to attribute the crash to mechanical failure.
The reversal
On 11 January, the position changed. Iran's president officially acknowledged that the country's armed forces had mistakenly shot the aircraft down with a missile near Tehran.
The sequence is the analytical core of the episode. Within roughly 48 hours, the official explanation moved from mechanical failure, asserted with certainty, to an admission of a missile strike. The public denial on 10 January came only a day before the acknowledgement.
The Canadian position also evolved over the same period, from an emphasis on avoiding premature conclusions on 9 January to a public suggestion of an Iranian missile on 10 January. That suggestion preceded Iran's own admission by a day.
For Ukraine, whose national carrier operated the flight and whose capital was the destination, the admission established the basic cause of the loss of life. By 15 January 2020 the question was no longer whether a missile was responsible, but what would follow from Iran's acknowledgement.
