Trump Assassination of Iranian General Soleimani - IRGC Counterstrike

They is also this analysis that was posted recently by PolitRussia. Unfortunately the video is only in Russian. But the main points are that Israel assasinated Soleimani, but Trump took responsibilty due to heavy monetary contributions from the Jewish lobby. Then Iran retaliated. And then US wanted to respond by taking down Iran's plane with military officials on board using a drone, and instead took down the Ukranian airplane. And then Trump proposed Iranians to take the blame in order to sort of close the book on the issue and avoid an open conflict, but it sort of backfired by the usual and anti-Trump suspects reigniting the "revolution fever" in Iran.

Not sure I agree with the second part of his theory, especially with the US actually taking down the Ukranian plane. But it's true that many experts in Russia propose that US drones that were flying in the area provoked the Iranians, and that it is possible that one of the drones flew close to the Ukranian plane, and the missile "chose" this target instead of the drone.

But, yeah, who knows if Israel wasn't involved here as well. After all, there are interesting coincidences regarding the downed plane itself that can't be easily ignored.

 
Joe has written a great article on the Ukraine Airlines shoot-down:


To have any chance of correctly understanding the shoot-down of the Ukrainian civilian airliner, it must be seen as a political rather than a military incident. A few days beforehand, the US had killed General Soleimani, an egregious attack on Iranian national pride. When Iran responded with pin-point accurate missile strikes on two US bases in Iraq, the score was - more or less - equal, as far as both parties were concerned.

You could argue, in fact, that Iran came out of the affair looking stronger and with more respect than when it entered. But all of that was undone with the shoot-down of the Ukrainian plane. Iran now appeared militarily inept, was forced to apologize to the world and protests groups in the country have used the tragedy to increase their calls for 'regime change'.
 
Joe has written a great article on the Ukraine Airlines shoot-down:
The article also makes a case for a likely suspect which ties in with:
One of the interesting facts about this situation is that of all planes it was a Ukrainian one. Moreover, the plane belongs to Ukraine International Airlines owned by the famous Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.

Igor Kolomoisky is the one who brought the current Ukrainian president Zelensky to power. Kolomoisky has a dual citizenship of Ukraine and Israel.

In 2014, it was the airport of Dnepropetrovsk owned by Igor Kolomoisky that was determining the flight pass of MH17 over Donbass when the plane got shot down.

Interesting coincidences.
Some powerful criminal gangs have a habit of leaving a sign that they were behind something. Perhaps the relation you mention is a signature, to make sure people in the know understand what they are dealing with. Probably some people around Kolomoisky know too and won't make a fuss.
 
Following the assassination of of the Iranian General there has been the following events among others:
Iran sends missiles to US bases in Iraq.
Shoot down of a Ukrainian passenger jet.
Understanding the manipulated shoot down of the Ukrainian plane as Joe explained
Protests in Iran following the shoot down of the passenger jet, where also many Iranians died.
Add to this:
Floods in South Western Iran receiving about a year of rain in a few days
Flooding has also affected 300 villages in Kerman Province, where many villages are also covered by heavy snow, according to local official, Majid Saeedi.​
“Links to the rural areas remain blocked due to the long distance from the main roads and the mountainous areas,” he added.​
Since the rainfall started on Friday, the province has received more than 100 millimeters of rain, which according to officials, is equivalent to the average annual rainfall in the region.​
And there has also been an event which would usually not be considered when talking about Iran, but who knows? I'm thinking about the eruption of the Taal volcano - This began yesterday on Sunday January 12 2020
The Taal might not look very imposing – it’s one of the world’s smallest volcanoes – but it is one of the so-called Decade Volcanoes. There are only 16 such volcanoes around the globe boasting such a designation, meaning they are known for violent and deadly eruptions and are therefore worthy of close monitoring and study. The last major eruption of the Taal Volcano occurred in 1977, while the deadliest one recorded happened in 1911, killing over 1,300 people and destroying all the settlements on the island.​
Could these events be related? This is hard to tell but one might consider the core in the following excerpt:
A: Activation of inner earth energies in response to events elsewhere. We have noted that your planet responds to activities on the surface. Often this is expressed as heat which results in earthquakes and/or volcanic eruptions. But it can also call forth other types of frequencies. There is another aspect that you should consider: the use of infrasound machines by secret projects to control human emotional states. Such instruments can evoke even more devastating responses from the planet and thereby the solar system.
I do not think it would be beyond the unthinkable to consider that some parties might use technology to boost the protests in Iran, but who knows?
The above quote is from:
(L) ...at the guys who were removing a stump out in the back yard. I noticed that the pool had swells, and they were big, slow, almost-entire-pool-sized swells. The water was going up and down, up and down, almost straight up and down, in a big way. It was BIG swells like you'd see on big open water long before a storm. I stood there and watched and watched and waited, because usually if the pool is doing something like that, it will calm down after 5 or 10 minutes. I watched it for at least 10 minutes or so, and I went back and looked at it again and it was still doing it 30 minutes later. Honey, you remember?

(Ark) Yes, yes.

(L) It was doing it for a long time, and it didn't stop.

(Ark) It was like, you know, being in resonance with something with frequency of 60 Hz or something like that.

(Perceval) But it didn't splash over the sides?

(L) No splashing, no wavelets. It was almost as if it had oil on top of it to keep it perfectly smooth, what mariners would call “oily swells” I think.

(Pierre) It was a very long wavelength, like 3 or 4 meters.

(L) Yeah, at least. We waited, and I was thinking maybe it was an earthquake or something like that.

(Pierre) Something in the ground?

(L) Yeah, so can you tell me what that was?

A: Activation of inner earth energies in response to events elsewhere. We have noted that your planet responds to activities on the surface. Often this is expressed as heat which results in earthquakes and/or volcanic eruptions. But it can also call forth other types of frequencies. There is another aspect that you should consider: the use of infrasound machines by secret projects to control human emotional states. Such instruments can evoke even more devastating responses from the planet and thereby the solar system.

Q: (L) So are you suggesting that this could have been...

[Q & A segment REDACTED by legal advice]

Q: (L) Are you also suggesting or saying that the use of the infrasound machines in and of itself can evoke negative reactions from the planet?

A: Yes

Q: (L) And then if it evokes negative reactions from human beings, that amplifies the negative reaction from the planet?

A: Yes
 
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Igor Kolomoisky is the one who brought the current Ukrainian president Zelensky to power. Kolomoisky has a dual citizenship of Ukraine and Israel.

Маленькое уточнение. Коломойский, по его собственным словам, имеет тройное гражданство. Украина, Израиль, Кипр.


Translation
A small clarification. Kolomoisky, in his own words, has a triple citizenship. Ukraine, Israel, Cyprus.
 
Does TOR M1 even have the ability to receive and track ADS broadcasts?
Yes.

Could you share a source? I searched some more and haven't been able to find one. Like Luc said above:

I don't think ADS is really used in military for critical assessments. The system is designed as a secondary system, i.e. convenience and an additional layer of information/safety, as far as I can tell. If ADS-B was spoofed or tampered with, it must have been to fool the general public/investigators (i.e. those looking at the flightradar24 data). But I cannot imagine that someone in the Iranian military based his decision to shoot down a plane on a public, unencrypted system that doesn't even have authentication. Any kind of military "standard procedure" should rule out such a thing, IMO.

ADS is GPS/satellite-based. The TOR M1 has two main radars and a radar-based IFF interrogator. Plus, ADS is relatively new technology. It's possible they can add new features to an older model like the M1 to make it compatible, but I haven't been able to find any information suggesting they've done so. And I'm not sure why they would, given that ADS is so easily hackable. I'd think they would stick to their radar-based IFF.

But the fact that the system and operator didn't identify the jet as "friend" or at least "neutral" is suspicious (barring any weird features about Iranian IFF protocols I don't know about). That, along with the normal flight path, are the biggest red flags, IMO. In addition to those, this Forbes article adds a couple more things that are weird about the whole thing:

The Boeing 737-800 was transmitting a unique transponder identification code. If the equipment on the SA-15 that picks that up, called an IFF interrogator, was malfunctioning, battery operators would typically look at the schedule of airline traffic through their area and see if the target matched with a scheduled flight, Deptula says. Flight PS 752 was delayed by almost an hour from its scheduled departure, taking off at 6:12 a.m.

The SA-15 operators also would have considered the path and speed of the plane on radar. “Is it operating at low altitude, at high speed, headed toward a sensitive area”? Deptula asks. Flight PS 752 was rising toward 8,000 feet at a relatively sedate speed of 275 knots when flight tracking data from its transponder cut out, a normal profile for an airliner, he says. “It is departing the area, climbing through medium altitude, not trying to hide its signature, looking like a routine operation.”
...
If the unit didn’t rush, they should have had sufficient time to make a considered decision as to whether to launch an interceptor, says Carlo Kopp, cofounder of the think tank Air Power Australia. It’s unknown if Iran has integrated its SA-15 batteries with its broader air defense radar network. If the SA-15 unit in question was operating independently, the operators’ visibility would have been constrained to its relatively short radar range of 11 to 13.5 miles. Its missiles have a maximum range of 7.5 miles. Given the slow speed of the 737, if the plane grazed the edge of the battery’s missile range, the operators would have had a decision window of 1 minute and 53 seconds, Kopp calculates. If it directly overflew the launcher, the soldiers would have had 3 minutes and 39 seconds.
...
In 2007 and 2008, Iranian air defense units mistakenly fired on two airliners amid fears that Israel was planning to attack its nuclear weapons development facilities, according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the New York Times. Iranian air defense forces believed enemy aircraft might mimic the flight profile of an airliner, the report said.

If that last bit is true, and not just propaganda, it might be significant. Also the bit about the IFF potentially "malfunctioning". In addition to the report about Russia possibly giving Israel the "codes" for Iran's Tor M1's, there's this too:

An Iranian government official claimed earlier this week that its Russian-made air defenses were compromised by Moscow, leaving Iran and its allies defenseless against Israeli airstrikes. An engineer with Tehran's Ministry of Defense alleged that codes forcing anti-aircraft missiles to treat hostile Israeli fighters as friendly were sold to Tel Aviv, effectively neutralizing Syria and Iran's S-300 surface-to-air missile systems.

An Iranian official, described by the Jerusalem Post as a senior member of Iran's Defense Ministry, told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida that Russia had sold "codes" to Israel that identified Israeli aircraft as friendly. The codes were used by Israel to prevent its aircraft from being targeted. Israel has flown dozens of air raids over Syria, and despite advanced air defenses, only the latest raid, flown last Friday, involved an actual missile launch.

The article doesn't say what the Iranians mean by "codes", but Tehran apparently means the Identify Friend or Foe codes that aircraft transmit to avoid being shot down by their own air defenses. The S-300 missile, an older surface-to-air missile similar to the American Patriot, was identified as the affected system. The S-300s not only would refuse to engage the Israeli planes, the report says, but also they wouldn't give notice that the planes had taken off from nearby Israel, giving Syrian troops time to prepare.

One question about your article:

The bottom line is that the claim that "panic and poor training" led the operator of the missile system to fire on a civilian airliner is not reasonable, particularly when a more reasonable explanation exists. The problem, however, is that the methods which were likely used to fool the operator left no trace or evidence that could be presented after the fact.

Why wouldn't it leave a trace? The combat vehicle of the system includes mission recording, so if he saw something weird about the radar track, why wouldn't it show up?
 
If it wasn't an accident, the plane was shot down, that makes me wonder who died. If it was murder, it might be a warning / show of force, retribution and / or cover up. I noticed this list of people going to Canada:

Yahoo did a wide spread as well. Like why did Canada run with the pity campaign. And was it a cover and a distraction.
And were some the Iranian Canadians possibly part of an advanced infiltration team like Mahdi Tajik, (Iran Briefing is anti Iran sight).


Mahdi Tajik is an expert nuclear physicist and has a master's degree in North American Studies from Tehran University Law School.[citation needed]

Webb discusses proxies, and lightly touches on the above assertion, skepticism of the Mint Press because its founder Odeh Muhawesh had ties with the former Ruhollah Khomeini / 21:43

The surface setup of Suleimani (as to the real reasons), Israeli hacking, White House infiltration, Cybereason, Amdocs (Controversy of Amdocs),

Whitney Webb (Mint Press), Blows Open Soleimani Killing, Iran Conflict, Boeing Crash & Global Espionage
At the 45:27 mark Jan 9, 2020
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism. Her work can be found here: The Authoritarians Who Silence Questions on Syria...

Odeh Muhawesh
6 years ago Vimeo / 24:14
Odeh Muhawesh spent the first 18 years of his life living in Jordan and now lives in the United States. In his own words, he was a Middle Easterner and is now a Midwesterner. He travels often and has visited four continents. Odeh believes that deep down we are all the same. If you put John Doe from a Western nation and Abdullah Mohammad from a Middle Eastern nation together in a room and they got to know each other, they would find that they both have the same fears and the same dreams. In his view, it is imperative that we get to know one another if we are going to get along in this world.

 
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Just saw this article on Twitter, which adds supports to what Joe wrote.

New Dimensions of Ukrainian Airplane Incident in Tehran; US Footprint Brighter than Ever! + Video
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America & Europe, Iran, Middle East, News, Opinion 13 January 2020
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As some days have been spent of the Ukrainian plane incident, new dimensions are be emerged about its details. The dimensions that may will clarify much of issues for all of people, after its final confirmation and formal announcement.
According to available information, few after Iran’s missile attacks on US terrorist forces in Iraq, the US reconnaissance aircraft “Rivet Joint”, started the simulation of cruise missiles firing to some targets in center of Iran.

The aircraft is the same aircraft that after downing of US MQ-4C UAV above the Hormoz strait by Iran’s defence system, flew above the Iranian islands Abu Musa and Siri the night before the July 4th (US Independence Day) and with changing its flight ID to an Iranian aircraft, provoked the Iranian air defense to attack and create widespread tension in the region. Anyway…

In fact, the Americans have acted against Iran’s defense system to mislead it; but it’s not the all of story!
What indicates the depth of disaster and US evil, is the changing the identification of a passenger aircraft to a cruise missile!

Perhaps, it’s a question for many people that why and how this cameraman was exactly in the right place and right time, and has set his camera exactly on that part of sky where the air defence missile hit the plane! And his unusual calmness with zero stress…

But in the next studies, that will be published with more scientific evidences, it will be shown how US Rivet Joint changes the Ukrainian aircraft ID, to a cruise missile, and provides the base for happening this great disaster.
On the other hand, it is increasing this probability that there is someone as a cameraman, that the intended location has been given to him, that be ready in the right time, in the intended place, and focus his camera on Ukrainian plane for filming. Because with doing this evil action and changing the plane’s ID, the possibility of its targetting by air defence systems located in the region, is so high.
And unfortunately this issue is done, due to the inherent duty of the defense systems. And the film of this event published in the anti-Iran government media short after the incident.

It is interesting to note that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also issued a warning about an hour and a half before the incident, calling for US commercial and non-commercial aircraft to not fly over Tehran “due to the potential for miscalculation of mis-identification”!



The Qatari Emir’s trip to Iran and rumors about his staggering financial aids to Iran for compensation, are interpretable in this regard. Because Qatar has a major indirect role in this event too and the US has abused of them for advancing its goals.

It is important to be noted that scrutiny of the events such Ukrainian plane crash, and announcing its conclusions in all over the world, usually takes weeks or months. But the commander of IRGC aerospace forces, that couldn’t say clearly many of issues to people because of security affairs, but with honesty and in the lowest possible time, and even before completing the investigations about the case, appears in front of the cameras and announces the targetting the plane by country’s air defence system. Then, this action may be a relief on survivors wound and show that Iran’s military forces are honest to their people.
 
Why wouldn't it leave a trace? The combat vehicle of the system includes mission recording, so if he saw something weird about the radar track, why wouldn't it show up?

Can't speak for Joe, yet back here there was the statement on certain systems:

...Related techniques like Pulse Radar Jamming have been developed which add an additional layer of protection for friendly forces by obscuring the location from which the jamming signal is emanating.

So perhaps if they can obscure in this way (and whatever else can be done to mask or image), this could also obscure the operation systems data logs from telling the true story.

There are denials from all sides on this possible spoofing aspect. One possibility is that if it is true, there are strategic reasons for not saying and just accepting blame. American 'analyst' seemed to be buttressing the reasons, and of course this is what they would say, nay, the guy messed up for this reason and that.

Just reading the latest by John Helmer, whereby he tracks Putin in the last many days (including negotiations with Turkey, the Russian Pipeline to the EU, Cyprus et cetera), and then he gets into UIA 752. He is kind of reporting point by point, yet he may have a lot more to say later, and pipelines and the Strait of Hormuz should not be forgot (there are many chess pieces in play that's for sure):


As the interview went live, western media had begun reversing the earlier US intelligence briefings on the cause of the crash of Ukrainian International Airlines UIA 752 after take-off from Tehran in the early morning of last Wednesday, January 8. The last minutes of the interview focused on the record of earlier crashes and the misinformation and official deception which had followed – Iran Air 655 in July 1988; Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988; and Malaysia Airlines MH17 in eastern Ukraine, July 2014.

An official announcement by the Iranian General Staff followed twenty-fours later. This accepted responsibility for the shooting-down of UIA 752 by an air-defence missile battery of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). A press briefing by the IRGC commander in charge of air defence, Brigadier-General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, followed shortly after. The text can be read here.

His account indicates at the time of crash on Wednesday morning, he “was in the country’s west following the missile attacks operation against the US bases.” The Iranian missile attacks on the US base west of Baghdad and near Irbil, in northern Iraq, occurred in the evening hours of Tuesday and Wednesday. UIA 752 took off from Tehran hours later, just after six on Wednesday morning, at a time the Iranians were on high alert in anticipation of a US counter-strike.

UIA 752 was hit by a missile fired from an IRGC battery of short-range Tor missiles from the Bidganeh military base, west of the city, Hajizadeh said. The base is well-known from a series of explosions of ordnance at the base in 2011. The firing position was not the one identified by the NATO propaganda broadcaster Bellingcat; it claimed to have located the ground source of a video clip of the missile strike filmed from a residence in Parand; Parand is 20 kilometres due south of the Bidganeh base. The missile fragment also broadcast by Bellingcat was not the one which struck the Ukrainian aircraft.

“The plane has been hit at a low altitude by a short-range missile with a small warhead and proximity fuze,” Hajizadeh reported. “It has exploded at the proximity [of the aircraft]; so the plane has found the chance to fly for a while; it hasn’t exploded in the air. After hitting the ground, it has collapsed. So no one at the [Iran Civil] Aviation Organisation knew about it, and I should defend my dear brothers there.”

After determining from his subordinates what had happened, Hajizadeh said he informed the General Staff later on Wednesday morning and flew to Tehran. There the likelihood of an accidental missile strike on the civilian aircraft was the prevailing military assessment at that time. This was not disclosed to the head of the Iran Civil Aviation Organisation or other Iranian civilian officials. The military investigation then “carried out the investigation in 48 hours”, according to Hajizadeh, before the high-level confirmations were issued. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s announcement was made at 0705 on Saturday morning, Iran time. President Hassan Rouhani followed at 0740.

The General Staff investigation examined whether there was electronic jamming or spoofing of the IRGC’s missile radars, and decided this had not occurred. A US military analyst has published this assessment, concluding: “Under these circumstances – highest possible alarm level, current warnings of hostile cruise missiles, unknown target flying towards a presumably military objective, lack of communication, little decision time – the operator of the Tor system did what he was trained to do. As a former military officer I cannot see any fault in what the man did.”
 
Speaking of spoofing, the following software is being discussed on social media (from Wikipedia):

Suter is a military computer program developed by BAE Systems that attacks computer networks and communications systems belonging to an enemy. Development of the program has been managed by Big Safari, a secret unit of the United States Air Force. It is specialised to interfere with the computers of integrated air defence systems.[1][dead link] Suter was integrated into US unmanned aircraft by L-3 Communications.[2]
Three generations of Suter have been developed. Suter 1 allows its operators to monitor what enemy radar operators can see. Suter 2 lets them take control of the enemy's networks and direct their sensors. Suter 3, tested in summer 2006, enables the invasion of links to time-critical targets such as battlefield ballistic missile launchers or mobile surface-to-air missile launchers.
The program has been tested with aircraft such as the EC-130, RC-135, and F-16CJ.[1] It has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006.[3][4]
U.S. Air Force officials have speculated that a technology similar to Suter was used by the Israeli Air Force to thwart Syrian radars and sneak into their airspace undetected in Operation Orchard on September 6, 2007. The evasion of air defence radar was otherwise unlikely because the F-15s and F-16s used by the IAF were not equipped with stealth technology.[2][3]

And this quote is from The Israeli ‘E-tack’ on Syria – Part II (see full article here):

Corruption of an ADS network does not involve actual control over the system or its components, but rather the insertion of misleading data. In conceptual terms, such false positives, including the fabrication of phantom targets and fake messages, are the most traditional form of corruption.

In contrast with WWII-style aluminium chaff or Cold War-style radar echo replication, Suter technology entirely bypasses the enemy’s radar wave machinery per se, instead inserting garbage information into the late-stage signal processing and communications functions.
 
And there has also been an event which would usually not be considered when talking about Iran, but who knows? I'm thinking about the eruption of the Taal volcano - This began yesterday on Sunday January 12 2020

[...]
A: Activation of inner earth energies in response to events elsewhere. We have noted that your planet responds to activities on the surface. Often this is expressed as heat which results in earthquakes and/or volcanic eruptions. But it can also call forth other types of frequencies. There is another aspect that you should consider: the use of infrasound machines by secret projects to control human emotional states. Such instruments can evoke even more devastating responses from the planet and thereby the solar system.

There could be something to this! Michael Snyder posted an article aksing why so many volcanoes are suddenly shooting massive ash clouds miles into the air, and he goes on to list just this last weeks events:

Last Tuesday, one of the most important volcanoes in Alaska shot hot ash 25,000 feet into the air
[...]
Then on Thursday, Mt. Popocatepetl in Mexico shot hot ash nearly 4 miles into the sky
[...]
Meanwhile, down in South America the Sabancaya volcano in Peru just shot a plume of volcanic ash approximately 24,000 feet into the air
[...]
But hardly anyone is paying any attention to what just took place in Peru because of what just happened in the Philippines.

On Sunday, Taal volcano roared to life, and it is being reported that the eruption sent “steam, ash and pebbles up to 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) into the sky”.
[...]
After already experiencing more than 1,000 earthquakes since the beginning of 2020, Puerto Rico was hit by a magnitude 5.9 quake on Saturday
[...]
----
 
Иран рассказал об арестах в связи с крушением украинского лайнера

Translation

Iran told about the arrests in connection with the crash of the Ukrainian airliner

MOSCOW, January 14-RIA Novosti. In Iran, the first arrests were made in the case of the crash of the Ukrainian plane, said the official representative of the judicial authorities of the country golyamhoseyn Esmaili.
More detailed information is not yet available.
The tragedy occurred on January 8. A Ukrainian International airlines plane flying to Kiev from Tehran crashed shortly after departure. All those on Board were killed: 167 passengers from Iran, Ukraine, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Afghanistan, and nine crew members.
On Saturday, the Iranian military claimed responsibility for the incident. They said that they shot down the airliner by accident, and the fault was the human factor: the plane was flying near a military object and it was confused with an"enemy target".
At the same time, Iran noted that it expected an attack from the United States, in connection with which the country's air defense systems were brought to full combat readiness.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said he expected Tehran to fully admit guilt, issue an official apology, punish those responsible and pay compensation.

В Иране по делу о крушении самолета арестовали несколько человек
 
4-6 minutes Associated Press in Dubai Snip: Tue 14 Jan 2020 09.08 GMT
Iran’s judiciary says arrests have been made over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed all 176 people on board just after takeoff from Tehran.

The announcement came shortly after Iran’s president called for a special court to be set up to investigate the downing last week of the plane by Iranian forces.

Iranian state media quoted judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili saying that “extensive investigations have taken place and some individuals are arrested”. He did not name anyone or say how many had been held.

Iran, which initially dismissed allegations that a missile had brought down the plane, acknowledged that its Revolutionary Guards had shot down the Ukrainian plane by mistake three days after Wednesday’s crash and in the face of mounting evidence.

“The judiciary should form a special court with a ranking judge and dozens of experts,” President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech in Iran on Tuesday. “This is not an ordinary case. The entire the world will be watching this court.”

Rouhani called the incident “a painful and unforgivable” mistake and promised that his administration would pursue the case “by all means”.

“The responsibility falls on more than just one person,” he said, adding that those found culpable “should be punished”.

He added: “There are others, too, and I want that this issue is expressed honestly,” without elaborating further.

 
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