Fateful Seconds of Living Hell, Then Death

"Nineteen seconds after the first missile hit the plane, the voices of pilots inside the cockpit indicated that the passengers were alive ... 25 seconds later the second missile hit the plane."                                                                                 "Therefore, no analysis of the performance and effects of the second missile was obtained from the aircraft's black box.”                                                                 "The data analysis from the black boxes should not be politicized."                           "What is evident is that Iran has accepted the responsibility for the mistake and therefore the country is ready for negotiations on paying full compensation."       Touraj Dehghani-Zanganeh head, Iranian Civil Aviation Organization

In this file photo from January 8, 2020, authorities stand near the wreckage of a Ukraine International Airlines plane that Iran said it accidentally shot down near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. © Abedin Taherkenareh / EFE

Flight PS752 was struck when two missiles 25 seconds apart hit the plane just moments after it left Tehran's main airport on January 8, with 176 passengers and crew aboard. After initially denying that it was responsible for the downing of the passenger jet heading for Ukraine on a regular route, Tehran finally had little option given the evidence, but to admit an 'accident' had occurred and indeed members of its al Quds branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down the plane.

They had been on high alert for incoming missiles from the U.S. military it was explained and mistook the airliner for a threat. No one survived the destruction of the civilian airliner. That very night Iran had launched a ballistic missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq, responding to a U.S. targeted drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani on January 3 in Baghdad. A great hero in Iran for his terrorist exploits against the Islamic Republic of Iran's 'enemies', his death might be seen as a preventive against further attacks such as he had engineered.

Iranian citizens demonstrated their anger at the  shooting down of the airliner with its massive loss of life by taking to the streets and vociferously blaming the regime and the IRGC. Most of the victims were Iranian civilians of whom 55 of the total were Iranian citizens of Canada, others Iranian students travelling to Canada to take up academic studies at Canadian universities. Other nations, Ukraine and France among them, lost citizens and await compensation from Iran to go to the families of the bereaved.

What is staggeringly beyond belief is that the regime's elite command military could have been so oblivious to the danger they were placing a commercial airliner and its passengers in, so consumed with its enactment of vengeance attacks they failed to take common-sense precautions, the most elemental of which would have been to close their air space to civilian aircraft at a time of such high tensions between Iran and the U.S., instead of placing so many lives in jeopardy.

Investigators at the scene of the wreckage.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi/File)

The second missile to bring down Flight PS752 hit the aircraft mere seconds after the first had struck. the gap of time between the two hits, estimated at 19 seconds captured on the black box recordings reflecting the damage the jet sustained from the first missile hit. Difficult to contemplate is the conclusion that the passengers were all alive after the airliner was struck by the first missile. The second one that was dispatched for whatever reason, extinguished all lives. It is the brief intermission between the two strikes that expresses the horror that would have struck all aboard with the realization that their lives were over.

"Our important questions regarding the reason for the delayed takeoff and the pilot's communications within that hour, which should have been included in the report of the black boxes, have also been left conspicuously unanswered." Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims

The flight crew of the aircraft consisting of two pilots and an instructor travelling in the cockpit had exerted a desperate, last-minute effort to maintain control of the plane -- until the last possible moment, pointed out the Iranian spokesperson. United Nations aviation rules that call for investigations whose aim is solely to prevent future accidents separate from any judicial process, represents the guidelines under which Iran's investigation is being carried out. 

The Civil Aviation Organization of Iran on Sunday published a report on the downloaded data from the Boeing 737 flight and voice recorders which emerged as a focal issue to fully comprehend the prevailing circumstances at the time Flight PS752 was shot down. According to the report released through the French investigation, the recorders had but 19 seconds of conversation following the first explosion, despite the second missile -- according to Dehqani-Zangeneh -- hitting the plane 25 seconds afterward.

Two missiles hit the plane, less than half a minute apart.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi)

Canada's Dilemma, The World's Problem

"If the allies are too harsh with Iran there is a risk they could abandon the deal [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal] altogether."
"At the same time, Trump can point to this incident [the shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 killing all 176 aboard] and say the Iranians can't be trusted with any weapons. So these three power [Germany, the U.K. and France] really are between a rock and a hard place [trying to convince Iran to honour the JCPOA]."
"[With no diplomatic presence in Iran, Canada finds itself without the capacity] to send a signal by closing an embassy or pulling diplomats."
"This is truly a dilemma in the philosophical sense. There are no good options."
Christian Leuprecht, political science professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario

"Trudeau was careful not to call this an act of war or to denounce the Iranians."
"He wants an investigation. But what if dialogue and engagement bears no fruit and Iran stonewalls him?"
"Then the question is how does Trudeau play it?"
Peter Rough, senior fellow, Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives for a news conference on January 9, 2020 in Ottawa, Canada. - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that Canada had intelligence from multiple sources indicating that a Ukrainian airliner which crashed outside Tehran was mistakenly shot down by Iran.  Dave Chan / AFP

When the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China, with European Union prompting, signed the JCPOA nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, it was with the expectation not that Iran would surrender its ambitions for nuclear weaponry, but that its ongoing research would be stalled for a defined period of time before it would once again resume refining uranium to nuclear dimension potential. The agreement stipulated nothing whatever of the regime's technological refinement of ballistic missiles that nuclear warheads would neatly fit on.

Iran's neighbours, well familiar with the Republic's ambitions to declare itself regional hegemon, with primary influence and command, an Aryan Persian Shiite theocracy firmly in control of a majority Sunni Arab neighbourhood, have good reason to fear Iran's aspirations. They have been largely achieved through threat and the spread of terrorism. Its Republican Guard Corps and in specific the Al Quds Force of the IRGC, has sponsored, weaponized and directed proxy terror groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad along with Yemen's Houthis.

Its alliance with and support for the Syrian Alawite (Shiite) regime of Bashar al-Assad enabled the Syrian president to massacre over a half million Sunni Syrians, internally displace millions of Syrians and create millions of refugees scattering to neighbouring countries for refuge, with millions finding their way to Europe for haven. Iran's infamous public declarations of its intention to destroy the State of Israel hasn't deterred it from taking a place on committees of the United Nations.

 Ukrainian Embassy, Ottawa, Jan. 9, 2020.  Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The volatile, destructive nature of Iran's ruling Ayatollahs, mullahs and imams have created hellish living conditions for Iranians, all the more so that sanctions have been reimposed on the country by the United States, the 'Great Satan', with the current administration determined to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. So, that the Iranian military used a Russian-acquired land-to-air missile to shoot down a passenger jet, deliberately or by misadventure gives a fairly good clue to how dangerous it would be for the world for it to acquire nuclear weapons.

Yet, despite all of this, the West is apprehensive about holding Iran to the same standards of civil behaviour and human rights entitlements as is expected of the rest of the world. How to 'punish' Iran for its vicious transgressions, much less its internal and external terrorism, its ongoing threats to world order, when it already occupies the position of an ostracized, dysfunctional state? Much of the problem lies in the approach of Western countries to the issue of Iran as a violent, threatening misfit of a nation.

Which 'progressive' elements of Western government feel that appeasement and reassurance to the regime is entirely appropriate, failing the most rational test of observers and psychological MidEast interpretation of bully states who view acquiescence to their demands is a sign of weakness, emboldening them to ever greater acts of defiance of civil norms in the belief that their religious beliefs shield them from reprisals and demands to conform to broad social norms and decency.

This satellite photo provided by Maxar Technologies on Jan. 9, 2020, shows the site where a Ukrainian jetliner crashed late Tuesday near the town of Shahedshahr, Iran, southwest of the capital Tehran.

The Canadian Press