Days after 176 people were killed in a Boeing 737 crash on the outskirts of Tehran, Iran Saturday admitted to “unintentionally” shooting down the aircraft. In a statement released by its military, it blamed “human error” for the accident and said those responsible would be held accountable. The jetliner, operated by Ukrainian International Airlines, crashed just after takeoff on Wednesday, hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at US forces in Iraq. For days, Iran denied that its missile had downed the aircraft despite US and Canada intelligence suggesting otherwise. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday became the first American official to publicly confirm the disclosures. The plane, en route to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew members from several countries, including 82 Iranians, at least 63 Canadians and 11 Ukrainians. On Friday, The New York Times released a video that appeared to show an Iranian missile hitting a plane near Tehran’s airport. A small explosion occurred when what appears to be a missile hit the plane above Parand, a city near the airport, but the plane did not explode, the video showed. The jet continued flying for several minutes and turned back toward the airport, NYT determined. The plane, which by then had stopped transmitting its signal, flew toward the airport ablaze before it exploded and crashed quickly. Visual and sonic clues in the footage also matched flight path information and satellite imagery of the area near where the plane crashed. The satellite images were taken on Thursday and provided to NYT by Maxar Technologies, a space technology company. Ukraine’s main intelligence agency, known as the SBU, said only that it had narrowed the cause of the crash to a missile strike or a terrorist act and that it could not confirm western intelligence that an Iranian missile system was likely to blame. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that the western governments had not initially shared the evidence underpinning their assessments that Iran had brought down the Ukrainian jet. However, a spokeswoman later said US officials had handed over more information.
