U.S., Allies Believe Ukraine Plane Was Shot Down by Iran
The U.S. has a ‘high level of confidence’ in the assessment, official says; shape of debris field and Iranian radar provide clues
U.S., Canadian and U.K. officials believe that a Ukrainian commercial aircraft that crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board, was downed by a missile system fired by Iran, possibly by mistake.
“We have a high level of confidence that this was shot down by Iran,” one U.S. official said Thursday, adding that the plane was being tracked by Iranian radar used to aim missiles just before the system was fired. A second official said the U.S. believes Iran may have shot down the aircraft by mistake.
The first official identified the weapon as a Russian-made SA-15 surface-to-air missile system, also referred to as the Gauntlet.
Iran disputed the accusation, which a government spokesman called a “big lie.”
One factor contributing to the U.S. assessment was the large field of debris at the crash site, a second official said. Planes that crash as a result of mechanical failure have narrower debris fields, the official said.
President Trump on Thursday said “I have my suspicions” about the crash, voicing doubt in remarks at the White House that the cause may have been a mechanical problem.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also said Thursday they believe the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile system. “This may well have been unintentional,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa of the crash, which killed at least 63 Canadians. He reiterated his push for a credible probe into the cause: “I want answers.”
While Canada and the U.K. said one missile was fired, the U.S. officials said two were used.
The Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane departed the Iranian capital’s Imam Khomeini International Airport en route to Kyiv, Ukraine early Wednesday.
The crash came hours after Iran launched missile attacks on U.S. troops at two Iraqi bases in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The timing of those attacks raised questions about whether the Ukrainian airliner was downed by a projectile.
10 miles
Tehran
10 km
Detail
Tehran
6:14 a.m. Last signal at 7,925 feet
IRAN
IMAM KHOMEINI
INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
6:08 a.m. Taxiing to runway
6:12 a.m. Takeoff
2 miles
2 km
Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, told Iran’s Channel 2 news program that it was “not possible” an Iranian missile had hit the jet. “How would the antiaircraft system shoot it? It wasn’t a security area,” he said.
Mr. Abedzadeh said that up to nine other planes were flying in the area at the time of the crash and dozens of aircraft were at an altitude of 25,000 feet. Witnesses saw the plane fall to the ground in flames, he said. “If the plane was hit by a missile it would have exploded,” he said.
Ali Rabiei, Iran’s government spokesman, said the country vowed to conduct a “fully transparent, precise, quick” investigation, according to a statement on news agency ISNA.
“A Pentagon source who didn’t want to reveal their name bombastically reported the news that the Ukrainian plane was hit by two missiles,” he said. “When in the future it turns out that there is no truth to this claim, no one will take responsibility for this big lie.”
Mr. Rabiei added, “We call on Boeing to send its representative to participate in the procedure of examining the black box.”
Iran earlier rejected the notion of a hostile act. “Since the Ukrainian pilot was trying to return to the airport, a rocket, missile strike or the country’s defense system is out of question,” said Hassan Rezaifar, head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization commission for accidents investigation, as quoted by Iran’s state news agency. “No missile part was found in the crash scene.”
Other Iranian officials quoted by the state news agency said the plane had suffered a technical fault, that it had started to turn back toward Tehran’s airport and was already on fire before it hit the ground. They said the jet had reached 8,000 feet before disappearing from radar.
The investigation is expected to be particularly thorny, with heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the killing of the top Iranian general likely to complicate international cooperation.
A spokesperson for Ukraine International Airlines didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Ukraine is interested in finding the truth. Therefore, I ask all our international partners: if you have any evidence to assist the investigation, please provide it,” said a spokeswoman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A Ukrainian official said that while Ukrainian investigators haven’t reached a firm conclusion, a missile strike seems increasingly likely.
A U.S. official familiar with the matter said Wednesday that data transmitted via satellite indicated everything was normal on the jetliner until the sudden loss of data and the fatal dive. That data suggest to some U.S. air-safety officials that there may have been a hostile act, said the official.
The last high-profile shootdown of a commercial airliner occurred in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when pro-Russian separatists battling the government downed a Malaysian plane with a surface-to-air missile. All 298 people on board the Boeing 777 died. International investigators said later the missile was Russian-made.
In 1988, the U.S. Navy’s Vincennes warship downed Iran Air Flight 655 with an air-defense missile. U.S. officials said they mistook the Airbus SE A300 airliner for a combat plane they feared would attack the ship. All 290 people on the plane died.
A report from the Iranian civil aviation regulator said the search operation for the Ukrainian jet found the so-called black boxes, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Both caught fire in the crash and were damaged, but the memories of the recorders remained in good condition, the report said.
A team of 45 Ukrainian experts and officials arrived in Tehran early Thursday and will be involved in decoding the black boxes and identifying and repatriating bodies. The team had already collected DNA samples from relatives of the victims in Ukraine.
“The priority for Ukraine is to establish the causes of the crash,” Mr. Zelensky said. Ukraine said the president spoke by phone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who pledged full cooperation in the investigation, including sharing all data with Ukrainian officials on the ground in Tehran.
However, it wasn’t clear how much access U.S. investigators will get to the crash site, given the current animosity between the two countries. Iran’s Mr. Rezaifar said the probe would be conducted according to standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, and in its initial report on the crash the regulator said it “would like to invite all the states involved in the accident to participate.”
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Based on ICAO’s convention, the home country of the airline and the makers of the plane and its major systems each are entitled to appoint a representative to participate in crash probes. That, in theory, includes the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing Co.
Boeing has said it is in contact with Ukraine International Airlines and is ready to assist in any way. Determining what went wrong is critical to the plane maker, which already is dealing with the grounding of its best-selling 737 MAX fleet after two fatal crashes involving that jet.
The plane that crashed, a 737-800, is the most popular version of the aerospace giant’s workhorse jet. The model and its variants account for around 25% of all commercial jetliners in operation, enjoying one of the industry’s best safety records.
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