Wow, TWO missiles. The poor crew and passengers really never had any chance to escape alive. As for the authors of that slaughter... I have very little consideration for fanatics that send human waves ahead of tanks to clear minefields. And to find volunteers, they give them a plastic key that, supposedly, open heavens and guarantee a place along Allah...

Dear God. Those iranians fanatics are scary as hell.

Everyone’s fanatics are scary (and inherently dangerous) as hell.
To try to explain/ attribute modern Iran and this particular incident to fanaticism is very simplistic and potentially reductive to the point of absurdity.

No it is not.
LEt me explain it differently.
Look, usually SAM (others than short range / shoulder mounted), the big ones with long range and sophisticated guidance systems, are under responsability of regular armies - air forces or land armies.
Except in Iran - the missiles that shot down that unfortunate airliner, were not under control of the regular army but one of these fanaticized militias - there are half a dozen of them inside and outside Iran, think Hizzbullah or Guardians of the Revolution or Pasdarans.
Well, actually this one.

Just as with MH17 and that Buk system that was passed to the Russian mercenaries in Ukraine, when powerful SAMs get outside control of professional soldiers in a regular army, those things happen. Kind of giving a matchbox and gasoline to an irresponsible kid or an angered teenager.

Those idiot fanatics were so persuaded to target a US drone or cruise missile, they send the missiles straight into an airliner.

That was the point I wanted to make.
 
Agreed. I'm not sure what relevance "fanatics" have to this tragic incident, no suicide bombers were involved, probably just an IRGC SAM operator panicking and making a bad decision when he lost contact with his chain of command.
 

 
probably just an IRGC SAM operator panicking and making a bad decision when he lost contact with his chain of command.
That is very possible. It's actually the only point that would be worth clarifying: whether the decision to shoot was really made by a little guy at the bottom, or by a higher-up like colonel or general. Unfortunately it is not likely that we'll ever know the truth unless there is a régime change in Iran.
 

A somewhat confused article at one or two points, I should note. Another thing is that they don't mention the missiles were actually fired from the Parandak garrison (23rd Takavar Division).
 
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All fanatics are scary. But it's the ones who think they have special dispensation from God or The State or the Historical Dialectic to end lives who are that extra little bit spooky.
I am also disturbed by the Nationalists who believe in eugenics and ethnic cleansing, the plain power-hungry and money-grubbing who seek to divert attention from their domestic misdemeanours by heightening international tensions, or the ones who are just seeking a place in history, or....

But I find it hard to understand the motives of the guys who wasted a couple of expensive missiles on a harmless plane like a thousand others that fly in and out daily, and trashing the reputation of the country they serve in the process. I have a feeling that somebody higher up in the food chain miscalculated, but how high up I am unsure: the subsequent bulldozing of the crash site was another bad miscalculation, but was it the same idiot?
 
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During a press conference on Sunday, Capt Zanganeh, head of the Civil Aviation Organisation of Iran (CAOI), said "up to 19 seconds" of conversation between two pilots and a pilot instructor had been captured in the aircraft's cabin after the first missile struck.

It was "25 seconds later that the second missile hit the plane", he said, adding: "They were piloting the plane until the last moment."

He said information recorded by the plane's black boxes - which hold key data and communications from the cockpit - indicated that the aircraft had been "in a normal flight corridor" before the first missile exploded, sending shrapnel into the aircraft.

Capt Zanganeh added: "At this moment, the plane has an electrical problem and the auxiliary power of the plane is turned on at the order of the pilot instructor. Both engines were on in the seconds after the explosion.

"No sound was heard from the passenger cabin at that moment... The recording stopped after 19 seconds."

No details of the cockpit conversation were disclosed.

 
 

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