Iran's admission and the fallout for Kyiv

What did the world know about the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by 14 January 2020, and how quickly had Iran's account collapsed? Within three days of the crash, Tehran had gone from insisting on a technical fault to acknowledging that its own forces had fired the missile.

From denial to admission

The Boeing 737-800, flying from Tehran to Kyiv, was shot down shortly after takeoff on 8 January 2020, killing all 176 people aboard. On 9 January, officials from the United States, Canada, Britain and Iraq said they believed an Iranian anti-aircraft missile had likely hit the aircraft accidentally. Iran said the cause was mechanical failure.

The same day, the New York Times released a verified video obtained from an Iranian citizen showing the plane being struck by what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile. Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said it was too early to draw definitive conclusions that the downing was an act of war, and he condemned Iran's attack on US bases in Iraq.

On 10 January, after Trudeau suggested an Iranian missile had brought the plane down, Iranian authorities rejected the theory. The country's civil aviation chief said he was certain no missile had hit it and still pointed to mechanical failure.

The position did not hold. On 11 January, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps admitted it had mistakenly shot down the aircraft as it took off from Tehran. Iran's president also officially acknowledged that the country's armed forces had erroneously downed the plane with a missile.

Anger on the streets

The admission had immediate domestic consequences. Vigils held in Iran for the victims turned into protests on 11 January. According to videos on Twitter, hundreds of protesters in Tehran called for the resignation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The unrest also touched diplomacy. The British ambassador to Iran, Robert Macaire, was arrested on 11 January after attending a vigil. Iran's Tasnim News Agency said he was held on suspicion of organising, provoking and directing radical actions. The BBC reported that he had also got a haircut. Britain's foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, called the arrest a flagrant violation of international law. Macaire was released more than an hour later.

What the sequence shows

The chronology is clear from the public record of those days. Western and Iraqi officials named a likely cause within a day of the crash, independent video evidence appeared the same day, and Iran's initial denial lasted until 11 January. Once Iran's own forces accepted responsibility, attention turned from the cause of the crash to its political consequences in Tehran and to relations with foreign governments whose citizens and diplomats were involved.