It’s been a week since the tragic downing of Ukrainian Air flight 752 in Iran, on the morning of January 8 just several hours after [Iran launched a missile attack against US bases in Iraq](https://steemit.com/war/@jasonliberty/iran-revenge-strikes-target-us-airbase-in-iraq); and despite a clearer picture of what took place emerging since then, there are still more questions than answers.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NLozlgBfDbw

What we do know  - confirmed by the initial investigation findings and admitted by several Iranian officials -  is that a Russia-built Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile fired from an Iranian air defense battery was the cause of the plane crash. And that is pretty much all we know for certain, with almost everything else being conjecture and theory. In fact it is still even uncertain whether the plane was struck by one or by two missiles. 

Officially, the missile strike was both ‘unintentional’ and a matter of ‘human error’, but even this is being called into question by skeptics and researchers alike. 

From *Citna News Agency* and [translated by a Twitter user](https://mobile.twitter.com/khoosh_/status/1216782662968455168), a University of Tehran Cyperspace Research Lab report has concluded otherwise:

 >**On the matter of the Ukrainian plane accident in Iran, the role of human error has been ruled out [as it has been discovered that] deception operations were carried out on the air control & command system.** If confirmed, the responsibility for this tragic accident lies directly with the criminal American government.

This has not yet been confirmed, however some type of false flag scenario does indeed seem likely at this point, and it is indeed quite possible that US or Israeli operatives launched a cyberattack against or hijacked the airplane’s system. 

We should keep in mind that every Boeing passenger airliner is equipped with the technology enabling it to be hijacked and controlled remotely by the government. This technology is called the Boeing Honeywell ‘Uninterruptible’ Autopilot System, and details of its operation emerged when John Croft reported on this new autopilot patent in *Flight Global*, with the news piece linked by a [Homeland Security News Wire](http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/boeing-wins-patent-uninterruptible-autopilot-system):

>Not only is it “uninterruptible” — so that even a tortured pilot cannot turn it off — **but it can be activated remotely via radio or satellite by government agencies.** 

For example:

>The “uninterruptible” autopilot would be activated – either by pilots, by onboard sensors, **or even remotely via radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency**, if terrorists attempt to gain control of a flight deck. ([*sourced via 21st Century Wire*](https://21stcenturywire.com/2014/08/07/flight-control-boeings-uninterruptible-autopilot-system-drones-remote-hijacking/))

Yes, if terrorists attempt to hijack the plane, or, I might add, if they simply wished to manipulate the flight path of an airliner towards a sensitive military instillation in order to trick an air defense unit into thinking it is an incoming hostile plane or missile and get it shot down. It’s certainly a possibility. And if the entire airplane can be taken over remotely, then certainly disabling the communication system, navigational system and transponders would be easy enough.

Not only does the US government have the ability to remotely hijack such an aircraft, but it may well be capable of sabotaging an Iranian air defense missile system as well. The *NY Times* reveals - [U.S. Revives Secret Program to Sabotage Iranian Missiles](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/us/politics/iran-missile-launch-failures.html):


>The Trump White House has accelerated **a secret American program to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets**, according to current and former administration officials, who described it as part of an expanding campaign by the United States to undercut Tehran’s military and isolate its economy.

Furthermore, Wikileaks revealed some time ago that, **“Russia gave Israel the codes for Iran's Tor-M1s** [missile defense system].” 

>Russia gave Israel codes for breaking Iran’s missile defense system in return for codes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Israel sold to Georgia, WikiLeaks claims. - [*Israel National News*](https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153273)

So the question isn’t *if* the US with the potential help of Israel was capable of orchestrating the shoot-down of this Ukrainian airliner by an Iranian missile(s), but did they? 

That operatives within the US government would be willing to intentionally cause a civilian airliner to be shot down is evidenced by the fact that between 1995 and 2001, the [“CIA Helped Shoot Down 15 Civilian Planes,”](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-helped-shoot-down-15-civilian-planes-11-12-2008/), as has now been publicly admitted, and which caused the deaths of countless civilian lives including several Americans, all in the name of the ‘war on drugs’. 

In our potential scenario, a clear motive was also present, as the large anti-government protests allegedly transpiring in response to this shoot-down are already being widely used by the western media as a part of the US & Israeli push for regime change in Iran. 

There is also reason to believe these protests may have been planned in advance, and were ready to be ignited upon a US directive. It appears there was at least to some degree foreign attempts to stir up these protests, as British Ambassador Robert Macaire was caught “trying to turn a mourning vigil in front of the Amir Kabir University of Tehran into an anti-government protest,” [*FARS News* reported](https://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13981022000968):

>On Saturday, a senior police official told local media that Macaire was arrested during a mourning vigil which turned into a protest in front of the Amir Kabir University in downtown Tehran **where he was organizing and provoking people**.

At the very least it is absolutely certain the western-backed Iranian anti-government religious cult and terrorist group, the MEK, was the main organizing force behind these protests allegedly arising in response to the downed airliner. This can easily be seen simply by taking a look at the video footage of these protests being circulated by the western media, all of it shared via the MEK. The MEK is the main force on the ground in Iran pushing for regime-change, and has very close ties to certain US figures behind these regime change efforts, such as John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani. 

Robert David Steele, an expert in this field who himself “managed a false flag operation for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and wrote the original warning letter to the White House, in 1994, on the vulnerability of all electronic systems,” [believes this was a false flag operation](https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/01/14/world-war-iii-was-ukrainian-flight-ps752-a-western-false-flag-combining-remote-hijacking-and-transponder-disabling-to-trigger-two-tor-m1-missiles/):

>I believe this event was a false flag event designed to discredit the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) while also seeking to drive a wedge between Iran and Ukraine, the latter being central to the US-dominated nuclear smuggling ring that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nurtured and protected in return for tens of millions of dollars in bribes.

In this post, we will delve into the many unanswered questions, anomalies, and apparent discrepancies in the official versions of the story, and look at the possibility that the circumstances leading up to this shoot-down were in some way influenced by outside forces, and that this event was therefore intentional and some sort of false flag operation.

One very interesting and potentially relevant fact is who exactly owns this airline. Ian Greenhalgh [in his latest article on the subject](http://greeknewsondemand.com/2020/01/14/ukraine-international-airlines-flight-ps752-downed-by-cyber-attack-most-likely-by-the-israelis/) writes:

>Ukrainian International Airlines is owned by Israeli businessman Aron Mayberg and the infamous Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch, politician and energy tycoon Igor Kolomoisky, who was notably one of the biggest financiers of the anti-Russian, pro-EU coup d’etat which overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

One of the biggest red flags that there was advance knowledge of this event is the particular video first used by the mainstream media as evidence to support their narrative before it was verified that an Iranian-fired missile was in fact the cause of the crash, purportedly showing an Iranian missile hit the airliner. The main question is, as [*South Front* asks in their most recent report on this ](https://southfront.org/how-and-why-iran-shot-down-ukrainian-boeing/): **“How could this person, have known when and what exactly to film without advance knowledge of the developments?”**

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M7r4VMTM2GE

This is suspicious to say the least, and it is worth noting that the Iranians don’t even appear to fully accept their own version of the story at this point, as they have now begun arresting numerous people suspected of being involved in the incident, including the very person who filmed this video. 

Also mighty suspicious was the coordinated effort by US officials and media to accuse Iran of shooting the plane down well before this had been confirmed. Another indication this may have been part of a pre-planned psyop. Both [*Moon of Alabama*](https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/pentagon-accuses-iran-of-shooting-down-a-ukrainian-plane-but-its-evidence-is-flimsy.html#more) and [*South Front*](https://southfront.org/whats-behind-boeing-crash-in-iran/) did a great job covering this early propaganda effort and exposing the complete lack of evidence for those claims at the time. 

The biggest question I think for most people is, why exactly was civilian air traffic in Iran not grounded on the morning the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had just launched an attack on US forces and were admittedly anticipating a likely US military response? 

From the *Iran Front Page*, reporting on IRGC's Aerospace Commander Amir-Ali Hajizadeh’s press conference on the matter, [via *Moon of Alabama*](https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/iranian-armed-forces-say-they-inadvertently-shot-down-the-ukrainian-plane.html#more):

>IRGC Aerospace Cmdr says we had requested the establishment of a no-fly zone given the war situation. **But it was not approved for certain considerations.**

What were these ‘certain considerations’? This seems a little strange to me.

Another serious question that has not been given a satisfactory answer in the official version of events is, just how exactly some ten other flights were able to safely take off in the same tense hours before flight 752 without being misidentified as hostile targets, and yet this particular one was misidentified and shot down? This, too, seems a little suspicious, and there are multiple theories attempting to explain this apparent misidentification.

*Moon of Alabama* theorizes that this likely occurred because a shift change had just taken place, and the new operators were under the impression that civilian aircraft had been grounded, and were not made aware that this was in fact not the case. However this theory doesn’t appear to hold up under scrutiny, for the operator said to have fired the missile is quoted by the IRGC commander as indicating it was himself and his crew who requested the grounding of civilian air traffic throughout the night.

>...this operator...says...that ‘we requested for several times that the country’s airspace be cleared of [civilian] flights.’

It turns out that the Iranian side had apparently not cleared the flight for takeoff, as information from Iranian sources indicates that the preflight inspection checklist was not signed by Iranian airport engineers, but the Ukrainian crew insisted on flying at its own risk. 

Why the Ukrainian pilot insisted on flying without final approval from the Iranian side remains a mystery, but we do know the plane developed technical difficulties during or immediately after takeoff. 

>Flight data suggested Ukraine International Flight 752 took off normally from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport at 6.12am on Wednesday. Serious issues emerged two minutes later, about 8,000ft up, and the plane stopped transmitting data. - [*The Independent*](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iran-plane-crash-news-latest-ukraine-boeing-737-russia-missile-a9276581.html) 

It is unclear whether the communication system and transponder failure was caused by the missile strike or occurred beforehand, but if it took place beforehand, then this is likely when the potential cyberattack occurred. 

Geenhalgh posits that:

>...this is when the cyber attack took place and it targeted both the navigational system and the Identify Friend or Foe (IFF)- transponder. The IFF transponder was turned off and the aircraft changed course, putting it on a direct heading for the IRGC base nearby.

*South Front* explains that, possibly:

>Therefore, the system operator, that experienced a communication failure, considered the plane as a ‘military threat’ because it may have been hijacked for a 9/11-style attack, got under control via a cyber-attack and/or used as a cover for a pinpoint missile strike on the IRGC site.

If the IFF transponder was disabled *before* the missile strike, rather than by a very coincidental direct hit by the Iranian-fired missile as the Ukrainians are claiming, then this would help explain why the Iranians misidentified this particular airliner as a ‘cruise missile’, but not the ten or more that took off in the hours just before this incident.

The perpetrators of such a cyber attack may have also been responsible for jamming the IRGC communications at the very time the plane was wrongly identified as a target, as can be seen in [the statements by the IRGC commander](https://ifpnews.com/irgc-releases-details-of-accidental-downing-of-ukrainian-plane):

>but at that moment, his communication system was apparently disrupted – whether because of **jamming systems** or the high traffic.

The operator had 10 seconds to decide whether to engage, and not being able to contact command, made the decision to fire. The reason they were on such high alert and prone to identify the airliner as a cruise missile is because they had been notified that cruise missiles had already been fired and were incoming. 

>At several stages, the Alert Level 3, which is the highest level, is communicated and emphasized to the entire network. So all air defence systems were at highest alert level. For several times, these systems including the one involved in the incident were notified by the integrated network that cruise missiles have been fired at the country. **For a couple of times, they receive reports that ‘the cruise missiles are coming, be prepared’.**

Why the systems had detected incoming cruise missiles when this was clearly not the case is unclear and also seems suspicious. 

I suspect it is possible that US or Israeli intelligence could have accomplished this feat in one way or another, whether by passing a false communication or hacking into the radar systems. The [statement put out by the General Staff of the Iran Armed Forces](https://ifpnews.com/iran-finally-admits-its-air-defence-unintentionally-hit-ukrainian-plane) appears to indicate that it was indeed the radar that picked up these mysterious incoming targets.

>The Iranian defence units received news of witnessing flying targets moving towards Iran’s strategic centres, **and then several targets were observed in some [Iranian] radars**, which incited further sensitivity at the Air Defence units.

In any event, the question of whether the plane stayed on its flight course or made a turn towards the sensitive military site - whether intentionally through outside remote hijacking or accidentally via loss of its navigational system - remains, and is a major concern. 

There appear to be potentially conflicting reports on this from the Iranian side. The General Staff statement appears to indicate the flight veered off course, and this is what resulted in its being targeted. 

>Under such sensitive and critical circumstances, the Ukrainian airline’s Flight PS752 took off from Imam Khomeini Airport, **and when turning around, it approached a sensitive military site of the IRGC, taking the shape and altitude of a hostile target**. In such conditions, due to human error and in an unintentional move, the airplane was hit [by the Air Defence].

The aircraft [reportedly](https://southfront.org/how-and-why-iran-shot-down-ukrainian-boeing/) deviated from the general PS752 course for around 2km.

However the IRGC commander stated that:

>**The plane was also on its track, it made no mistake.**

It certainly seems more plausible and in line with the available information that the plane went off course with a disabled IFF transponder, which led to its misidentification as an incoming ‘cruise missile’ or enemy warplane by the Iranian air defense unit. 

Another strange anomaly is that a Qatari airliner was apparently in the Tehran airspace at the same exact time the missile was fired, [as *Sputnik News* has reported](https://br.sputniknews.com/oriente_medio_africa/2020011415006407-autoridade-iraniana-revela-existencia-de-2-aviao-no-ceu-ao-ser-abatido-boeing-ucraniano/), and air traffic control working with Iranian air defense somehow managed to negotiate safe passage for this jet, but was unable to do so for the Ukrainian airliner.

Also suspicious is a surprise visit by the Emir of Qatar to the Iranian President soon after the plane crash, where he apparently offered to pay Iran a large sum  in compensation for the loss of lives on flight 752, leading many to speculate that the only logical reason for doing so is because Qatar is somehow involved in and at least partially responsible for the downing of the jet.

>**According to several sources, the reason for the visit is for the Emir of Qatar to offer President Hassan Rouhani $3 billion in compensation for the 176 passengers who lost their lives** following Iran’s admission that it shot down the Ukraine-bound aircraft after mistaking it for a ‘hostile target’. - [*MEO*](https://middle-east-online.com/en/qatar-offer-iran-3-billion-ukrainian-plane-victims)

Qatar is a US ally, and reports of a Qatari airline in Tehran airspace at the very same time the missile was fired further supports this theory, as such a flight could have been used by intelligence operatives to launch a cyber attack, remotely hijack the airliner, or break into the Iranian Tor-M1 missile system. 

Another question that must be asked is whether a human operator actually fired the missile, or if the missile system was unmanned and set on automatic at the time the missile was launched. Although the Iranian official version of events clearly states that the operator made the decision, and the cause of the shoot-down was ‘human error,’ there are apparently many Iranian reports stating otherwise, including the first report referenced at the very top of this post. I cannot verify this, as I do not read Farsi, however there are certainly those who are entertaining this possibility.

If the missile system was unmanned at the time the missile was fired, it would certainly explain how the large airliner was so easily misidentified as an incoming ‘cruise missile’, simply based on its trajectory. Such a scenario would have also given plenty of opportunity for outside interference to cause the missile launch. If the missile system was hacked, I do not know if an operator would be able to manually stop a missile from being fired, but he would most definitely not be able to do so if he was not present at that exact moment. 

Another major discrepancy in the developing western narrative, is that it is now being claimed two missiles were fired by the Iranians and hit the jet. A newly released video purporting to show two missiles striking the plane, and verified as authentic by the *NY Times*, is being used as the confirmation of this version of the story.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oZPZYzvOs7k

This latest development allows for the western narrative to shift from Iran accidentally shooting down the plane, to having done so intentionally in a malicious act. After all, there is a 32 second gap between the two missile launches in the second video, and 12 seconds between the impact of the first missile hitting the plane and the launching of the second missile; which appears to rule out the possibility that Iranian air defense operators misidentified the plane as an incoming cruise missile, with only a ten second time-span to decide whether or not to fire. The video does in fact *seem* completely incompatible with the Iranian version of the story that the shoot-down was unintentional, and also contradicts the Iranian statements indicating only one missile was fired. 

The only problem with this scenario is, that in the first video being widely circulated as evidence supporting the western narrative before Iran admitted fault, only one missile can be seen striking the plane. This fact alone casts serious doubt on the entire western narrative currently being put forth.

There is of course always the possibility that the airliner was in fact intentionally shot down, as *South Front* explains:

>Then, there is one more explanation: The plane was shot down deliberately to exert additional pressure on Iran from the United States during the alleged acute phase of the crisis between Iran and the United States, which had a chance to develop into an open regional war. In the framework of this version, **it could be suspected that the operator may have been recruited by US intelligence or blackmailed, or the system was captured in an act of sabotage by the US or its affiliated forces [ie. Israel]**.

In the end, we may never know all the details of exactly what transpired to cause this tragic ‘accident’, and whether or not it was truly entirely an accident. What we do know for certain is that the US and Israel both have long histories of orchestrating false flag operations, military psyops, and knowingly selling false narratives of deception in order to push their war agendas. We know they had the means to carry out such an operation in this case. We also know they are using this tragedy to push a pre-planned political agenda.

And we know that the story as it is being currently told - in both the American and Iranian versions - leaves far too many relevant questions unanswered, and is full of too many inconsistencies to be taken at face value. 

Maybe it was nothing but an accident caused by ‘human error’ just as Iran has said. The way the story is developing does not seem to indicate this, but it is certainly possible. If this is indeed the case, at least Iran stepped forward and admitted their fault within a matter of days, and publicly apologized for their mistake; something America to this day still refuses to do in regards to [the US downing of Iranian Air flight 655](https://steemit.com/deepdives/@jasonliberty/that-time-the-us-shot-down-an-iranian-civilian-airliner-killing-all-290-passengers-and-lied-to-cover-it-up), which also killed everyone on board including 66 children, and was arguably very much intentional. The contrast could not be more clear.