Us Embassy In Iraq Under Attack

[Jeff]

 

 

 

Armed Forces’ internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people.

Investigations continue to identify & prosecute this great tragedy & unforgivable mistake. #PS752

 

 

The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake.

My thoughts and prayers go to all the mourning families. I offer my sincerest condolences.

 

https://twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/1215856679423823872

 

At least Iran has some balls and admitted to the shoot down unlike the Russians

 

 

Now you've done it.

[rmgill]

 

Apparently the guy who gave Iran the money to buy those Russian missiles just bought a home on Martha's Vineyard.

 

Ah, I see the Trumpers are still peddling that "Obama gave billions to Iran" bullshit.

 

Did he? Yes he did. Can they use that money for terrorism? Yes they can. Do they? Likely. So, it's not bullshit. In the least. Stop denying reality.

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51077788 What have Iran's leaders said?

Ayatollah Khamenei said there was "proof of human error" and that he had asked "relevant authorities to take necessary measures to prevent" such an incident happening again.

President Hassan Rouhani said: "Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake." He vowed to prosecute those responsible.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif apologised to the families of the victims but laid part of the blame on the US. "Human error at a time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to [this] disaster," he said.

Iran's ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, apologised for sharing "wrong findings" about the crash. He had earlier said Iran was "confident" that a missile had not been launched.

"I conveyed the official findings... that [a] missile could not be fired and hit the Ukrainian plane at that period of time," he said. "I apologise."

BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet says the Iranian leaders' admission is highly unusual and comes at a crucial moment. Iran has decided it has to own this disaster to avoid triggering another war of words with the West or further angering its own people, she says.

How have Iranian citizens reacted?

Some video footage on social media has shown sporadic protests in central Tehran, with people calling for resignations and accusing officials of dishonesty.

Some chanted for the resignation of the commander in chief - Ayatollah Khamanei.

A number of social media users asked why Iranian officials had not accepted responsibility earlier, appearing only to do so after international pressure.

One wrote: "Your mistake was inadvertent. Your lie was intentional. People should not be lied to under the pretext of expediency."

Another questioned how an air defence system could mistake a Boeing 737 with a missile.

Some users changed profile pictures to black to mourn the loss of the people on the plane.

Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist and former university professor based in Tehran, said it was difficult to see how officials could escape from this as "just about everyone has lied during the past three days".

[RETAC21]

 

 

Apparently the guy who gave Iran the money to buy those Russian missiles just bought a home on Martha's Vineyard.

 

Ah, I see the Trumpers are still peddling that "Obama gave billions to Iran" bullshit.

 

Did he? Yes he did. Can they use that money for terrorism? Yes they can. Do they? Likely. So, it's not bullshit. In the least. Stop denying reality.

 

 

What do you mean likely? of course they have used for terrorism and to set up militias - where do you think Soleimaini money came from and why other countries in the region where against JCPOA?

[Nobu]

Tehran may have sensed unease in the Iranian street, and decided to come clean. The alternative would have been to ride out a wave of rising public dissatisfaction with the weakness and incompetence of its leadership.

 

I don't like it, but I respect it.

[bojan]

Local AD guy analyzed quickly shutdown, basically that thing could only occur if there was a total breakdown in the command chain and unified data sharing for AD (or they don't have a proper command chain* and unified AD) or whole battery crew was utterly incompetent.

 

*Some sources say Tor is IRGC, some say they are not. Which might be a root cause of it.

Edited January 11, 2020 by bojan

[Stuart Galbraith]

The confusion may be it was defending an IRGC barracks. Or maybe they have the same dual command they have for the Rocket forces. If so, they may want to rethink that.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Stuart Galbraith

[Jeff]

 

 

Apparently the guy who gave Iran the money to buy those Russian missiles just bought a home on Martha's Vineyard.

 

Ah, I see the Trumpers are still peddling that "Obama gave billions to Iran" bullshit.

 

Did he? Yes he did. Can they use that money for terrorism? Yes they can. Do they? Likely. So, it's not bullshit. In the least. Stop denying reality.

 

 

John F'in Kerry and Susan Rice are on video admitting that part of the money was likely going to end up with the IRGC for terrorism purposes.

[Nobu]

basically that thing could only occur if there was a total breakdown in the command chain and unified data sharing for AD (or they don't have a proper command chain* and unified AD) or whole battery crew was utterly incompetent.

 

Or all three.

 

The quicker Iran and Iranians can get back to the whole shadow war method of waging it, the better for them, as there are indications that when Hitler spoke of kicks and rotten structures, he may have been describing Iran.

[Panzermann]

 

 

 

Armed Forces’ internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people.

Investigations continue to identify & prosecute this great tragedy & unforgivable mistake. #PS752

 

 

The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake.

My thoughts and prayers go to all the mourning families. I offer my sincerest condolences.

 

https://twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/1215856679423823872

 

At least Iran has some balls and admitted to the shoot down unlike the Russians

 

 

 

I guess it helps that Iran shot down mostly its own citizens to be able to admit what has happened. Plus the pro-active angle Banshee1 mentioned. Ukraine and all others involved went on denial and conspiracy theories and FUD. What both incidents have in common imho is, that the situation changed from peaceful to alarm quickly for crews not used to war and at least for me afaik yes, an undertrained underprepared stréssed out ukrainian crew shot down MH-17 in a big mistake of the situation. Similar in Iran. The iranian AD crew seems to have misidentified an outgoing aeroplane as a US cruise missile. Somewhere along the line the comms must have been seriously broken. But then I doubt that Iran ever has put up a complete AD screen on a moments notice or has really trained at this scale. so all crews involved were not really prepared and the systems not really tested if they work as intended or if there is some problem in command and control. The bearing should have told them that it is not a cruise missile, but after the killing of an iranian diplomat that also was kind of a folk hero in Iran everybody was on a hair trigger I bet. Probably having a schizophrenic Ad control system between IRGC and regular army will not have helped in the situation.

 

 

---

 

 

 

Well, we're coming back to the part where any Trump deal is always the best deal, no matter what the actual content.

 

The ® behind the name is a sanctifying halo, making everything right and true the politician does or says. The "God-emperor Trump" started as a sarcastic joke, but obviously people started to believe in it in a hipster ironic kind of way. Which makes it no longer ironic if you believe in it. Similarly for (D), revering Hillary Clinton as a saint and saviour. Or Obama as a new messiah. Though those were never ironic I think.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Panzermann

[Adam Peter]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51077788 What have Iran's leaders said?

How could be protests and calls for resignation be heard in Tehran, when we all heard here from our US members that the Religious Police kills, beats, and gulags everyone dissent?

[Panzermann]

Well the pro-active move was maybe not enopugh. Al-Jazeera reports protests with calls for resignment: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/iranian-protesters-demand-khamenei-quit-downing-plane-200111171757858.html

 

Iranian protesters demand Khamenei quit over downing of plane
Videos and comments on social media show angry Iranians calling on the government to resign over plane crash incident.

A group of Iranian protesters has demanded Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei step down after Tehran said its military mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian plane, killing all 176 people on board.

"Commander-in-chief [Khamenei] resign, resign," videos posted on Twitter showed hundreds of people chanting in front of Tehran's Amir Kabir University on Saturday.

Others on Twitter asked why the plane was allowed to take off when tensions in Iran were so high.(...)

 

Iran denied for days after Wednesday's crash that it brought down the plane, although a top Revolutionary Guards commander said on Saturday he had told authorities about the unintentional missile strike the day it happened.

Speaking from Tehran, Al Jazeera Dorsa Jabbari said, "There is a lot of anger. Iranians are demanding justice and accountability. Many people including families of the victims are in shock. They do not understand why their government would have lied to them for this long."

(...)

Rare apology

Iran's Revolutionary Guards, in a rare step, apologised to the nation and accepted full responsibility for the plane crash.

Senior Guards commander Amirali Hajizadeh said he had informed Iran's authorities on Wednesday about the unintentional strike, a comment that raised questions about why officials had publicly denied it for so long.

Speaking on state television, he said he wished "I could die" when he heard the news about the incident.

 

As a IRGC commander reported the shoot down and the IRGC takes responsibility, I think this supports the TOR control of the IRGC.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51077788 What have Iran's leaders said?

How could be protests and calls for resignation be heard in Tehran, when we all heard here from our US members that the Religious Police kills, beats, and gulags everyone dissent?

 

 

 

There never were strikes or protests in the soviet union either. All one monolithic perfectly working evil empire.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Panzermann

[Jeff]

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51077788 What have Iran's leaders said?

How could be protests and calls for resignation be heard in Tehran, when we all heard here from our US members that the Religious Police kills, beats, and gulags everyone dissent?

 

 

Not for their lack of trying. Have you been following the news from Iran these past few months?

[bojan]

The confusion may be it was defending an IRGC barracks. Or maybe they have the same dual command they have for the Rocket forces. If so, they may want to rethink that.

It does not work that way (or at least it was not supposed to).

In local case in 1999. missile regiment would get warning from an early warning service and their search radars. Those are also responsible for identifying what kind of plane/s it is. They were also linked to a civilian ATC in order to prevent any fuckups with civilian aircrafts (even through sky over Yugoslavia was formally closed for civilian flights) . When a warning is received regiment commander decides if it would be engaged or not, depending on the various facts. Engaging anything within 10km of the borders was strictly forbidden. Batteries get info about plane/s position and heading from a regiment search radar. Battery then tries to acquire target with own search radars. If a target is acquired then battery commander decides to engage it or not with a targeting radar. Depending on the success of the the target lock battery commander decides to fire or not.

If regiment was operating independently then any target it spotted it had to be checked with early warning service, except if it is directly targeting regiment (not just flying toward it).

If battery was operating independently any target found was to be checked with regiment and early warning, unless it is directly targeting battery.

 

I noted that Lukashenko's plane was almost shot at - AD had strict orders not to engage anything in the next 4 hours. However one battery did not get that order since it was on the relocation move and it observed total radio silence. It was not considered a problem cause planned time for the move and setup was longer than 4 hours. They did it however in less than 2.5 hours and when they turned their search radar shortly (SOP after arriving in the position in order to check if everything is working) it saw lone plane with relatively faint radar return heading toward Belgrade. Visual observation failed due the overcast weather. They decided to track it while calling regiment/early warning to chech WTF was that lone plane. Ofc, they got answer that it was Lukashenko's plane and they turned off their radar (and had to relocate again since they had it turned on for a longer than 3 seconds checkup time).

But what about faint radar return, passenger planes have pretty big ones? Some of the vacuum tubes were old and worn and would occasionally show incorrect return strength of the target...

Edited January 11, 2020 by bojan

[Stuart Galbraith]

Am I right in believing Tor is a battlefield weapon, like Buk?Because one of the early accounts talked of a noise coming directly from the barracks. Which implies the unit was actually parked IN the barrack, and was not part of the established network (The Sam 2s and Sa5s) that was coordinating with ATC. They may just have lit up in a panic.

 

I don't fault your logic, but what little I've read of how the Iranians performed in the 1980s was not remotely as well organised as Serbia was. That they plinked so many of their own aircraft illustrates they had, and perhaps still do, a bit of a problem.

[RETAC21]

According to a local paper, quoting Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the air wing of the IRGC, the sequence of events is:

 

06:12:47 local: Flight PS752 takes off an hour late.

06:14:20: the 737 turns 24º to the right, approaching an IRGC base which houses a battery of the recently added systems to the defence og Tehran in anticipation of a US attack.

As the aircraft reaches 1.400 m. over the runway level, the battery operators (you know who the fall guys are going tobe here...) identify it as a cruise missile. They try to contact the command center which doesn't answer for 10 seconds apparently due to interferences.

Getting no answer, they decide to fire one missile - with at least one missile hitting as the plane overflies Parand, southeast of Tehran.

After one minute at least on fire and with no comms from the pilot, the plane goes down 15 Km from the airport in Shahriar.

[DKTanker]

 

Apparently the guy who gave Iran the money to buy those Russian missiles just bought a home on Martha's Vineyard.

 

Ah, I see the Trumpers are still peddling that "Obama gave billions to Iran" bullshit.

 

 

What "bullshit." It is a fact that Obama gave Iran over $1billion in cold cash. Now you can argue that the money, released from frozen assets, always belonged to Iran. But the money was frozen for a reason and should have remained frozen. But that wouldn't have allowed kickbacks to Team Obama and his Euro buddies.

[Roman Alymov]

Am I right in believing Tor is a battlefield weapon, like Buk?Because one of the early accounts talked of a noise coming directly from the barracks. Which implies the unit was actually parked IN the barrack, and was not part of the established network (The Sam 2s and Sa5s) that was coordinating with ATC. They may just have lit up in a panic.

 

Not battlefield weapon “like BUK” (TOR is not supposed to be operating where bullets fly, but at least could engage air targets while on move –while BUK is supposed to operate from standby position as part of vehicles set linked by cables as far as I remember) , but both of them are not supposed to operate in peacetime conditions under intensive air traffic route. Attempts to use relatively cheap mobile SAMs as “strategic” air defense (like Ukraine did and like Iranisns atttempted to), without sophisticated (and expensive) command system constantly linking them to command HQ with multiple sources of information is short way to trouble.

For illustration - rare video of BUK in real combat position in combat zone

 

TOR firing on move

Edited January 11, 2020 by Roman Alymov

[Nobu]

Iran and Iranians are in over their heads here. I don't think Washington was aware of quite to what extent. It is now, though.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Nobu

[JasonJ]

A flight tracker website. Only shows past flights back a few days. So gotta get them before gone.

 

List of only departures from Tehran Imam Khomeini.

 

January 6th.

https://www.airportia.com/iran/imam-khomeini-international-airport/departures/20200106/0000/2359/

[JasonJ]

January 7th

https://www.airportia.com/iran/imam-khomeini-international-airport/departures/20200107/0000/2359/

[JasonJ]

January 8th

https://www.airportia.com/iran/imam-khomeini-international-airport/departures/20200108/0000/2359/

[JasonJ]

Was just wondering if the website was responsive and not just old complied data. January 9th shows PS752 as cancelled.

https://www.airportia.com/iran/imam-khomeini-international-airport/departures/20200109/0000/2359/

[JasonJ]

List for arrivals to the airport have a similar length.

 

So its been pretty busy in those skies.

 

For it to have been an accident would have to be some unbelievably high degree of incompetence. But if MSM says it was an accident, then surely, without a strand of doubt, it must have been an accident [/sarc]. Even if MSM is so obviously wrong about other things that everyone agrees on (not sarc).

Edited January 12, 2020 by JasonJ