Iran's admission and the days after Flight 752

What had changed in Tehran by 13 January 2020, two days after Iran admitted shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet? The answer, as reported at the time, was that the admission had moved the story from the cockpit and the radar screen into the streets.

The aircraft was Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, 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, and all 176 people aboard were killed.

The admission of 11 January

On 11 January 2020, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps admitted it had mistakenly shot down the plane as it took off from Tehran. The same day, Iran's president officially acknowledged that the country's armed forces had erroneously hit the aircraft with a missile near the capital.

From vigils to protests

Vigils held in Iran for the victims then turned into protests. According to videos posted on Twitter, hundreds of demonstrators in Tehran called for the resignation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

An ambassador detained

The unrest briefly touched diplomacy as well. On 11 January 2020, the British ambassador to Iran, Robert Macaire, was arrested during the protests. According to the BBC, this came after he attended a vigil and then got a haircut. Tasnim News Agency reported that he was held on suspicion of organising, provoking and directing radical actions. The U.K. Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, said the arrest was a flagrant violation of international law. More than an hour later, Macaire was released from custody.

By 13 January 2020, then, the sequence was set out in public: a missile strike on 8 January, an admission on 11 January, and, on the same day, street demonstrations and a diplomatic incident that followed from the response to the deaths.