Tag: troop withdrawl

Collateral damage

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In Stunning Reversal, Iran Admits Accidentally Shooting Down Ukrainian Passenger Jet


The high tensions caused by Washington between the US
and Iran are to blame for the Ukrainian airliner that 
was shot down. “Human error at a time of crisis caused
by US adventurism led to disaster.”

Just as the Iranian commander misinterpreted the 
airliner’s maneuver as a strike on a military base, 
an American or a Russian can conclude that a false 
warning of incoming ICBMs, of which the Cold War had 
many, is real.  

During the Cold War as each side was working to reduce
tensions, there was no hair-trigger in place. Now that
the US has caused high tensions with Russia as it has with
Iran, false alarms are extremely dangerous. This is the message
that Stephen Cohen, myself, and others have continually given. 
Hopefully, some good will come from the loss of 176 lives by
sobering up the war hawks in Washington who are forever issuing
threats. The responsibility for raising tensions to such
dangerous levels in both Iran and Russia is entirely 
Washington’s.

This reckless and irresponsible behavior must stop before the
unnecessary tensions cause Armageddon. 
Paul Craig Roberts, "The Danger In Threats"

Interference

Whoever fired the missile is at this point almost irrelevant.  It is directly attributable to Western interference from 1953 onward.  It is the collateral damage caused by imperialism.  The Iranians were expecting a counter attack as  the US had announced that it was deploying deploying six nuclear B-52 bombers to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Iran experienced a 4.5-magnitude earthquake in the region of its Bushehr nuclear power plant.  In these circumstances accidents can happen.

Why would they ask for an international investigation then back down and admit? Are they under pressure to accept the blame?     It took Iran a couple of days to admit culpability but when America killed 290 people by shooting down a commercial airliner they never admitted liability.  Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight shot down on 3 July 1988 by an SM-2MR surface-to-air missile fired from USS Vincennes, a guided-missile cruiser of the United States Navy. It took until 1996 for the US to reach a settlement.  The U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran. The crew of the ship and the Captain were awarded Post-tour of duty medals.  

 

I still believe that the fact that the aircraft was Ukrainian is a strange confluence of events to say the least. Also the fact that Iran was willing to request a transparent international investigation then backed down and admitted fault. It suggests that they were under enormous pressure to take responsibility. For now we accept the official narrative that it was an Iranian mistake – the collateral damage of Empire.