Iranian officials strongly denied Friday that a Ukrainian International Airlines jetliner that crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport had been shot down by a missile fired by Iran forces by mistake.
"What is obvious for us, and what we can say with certainty, is that no missile hit the plane," Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization, told reporters during a Friday morning news conference. "If they are really sure, they should come and show their findings to the world."
Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei accused the U.S. of "adding insult to the injury of the bereaved families."
"No one will assume responsibility for such a big lie once it is known that the claim is fraudulent," Rabiei said.
Intelligence sources indicate that Iran's military forces had mistakenly fired on Flight 752, using two SA-15 surface-to-air missiles supplied by the Russians. Several U.S. officials said signals were detected before the crash that indicated Iran's anti-aircraft system was in use at the time. Those same officials said satellites detected two surface-to-air missile launches moments before the plane crashed.
All 176 passengers on board Flight 752 were killed in the fatal crash early Wednesday, just after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq in retaliation for a drone strike that killed its top general, Qasem Soleimani. Among the dead were 63 Canadians, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling for a "full and credible" investigation on Thursday, adding that Canada's own intelligence sources back up U.S. findings that said Iran shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake.
"We have intelligence from multiple sources including our allies and our own intelligence," Trudeau said. "The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile."
Video verified by the New York Times appeared to show the missile striking a plane as it climbed above Parand, a city near the airport. A small explosion can be seen in the video as what appears to be a missile strikes the plane. According to The Times' report, the plane was able to continue flying for several more minutes as it turned back to the airport before it ultimately exploded and crashed.
Two flight recorders were recovered from the crash. The 'black boxes' were damaged, but readable, Abedzadeh said. Ukraine will be allowed to have access to the data and Canada will work with Ukrainian crash investigators.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the U.S. and Canada should release any evidence they had that a missile brought the plane down, adding that the possibility of a missile being responsible for the crash "cannot be ruled out but cannot currently be confirmed."
Recovering the data from the flight data recorders could take more than a month and the crash investigation up to a year, Iranian officials said. Iran may request help from international experts if they have trouble recovering the flight data.
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