It's 2am on January 8th 2020 and our guy is sitting in a Tor-M1 air-defense missile system about 10kms north-west of Imam Khomeini international airport, west of Tehran.
General Soleimani had been buried the day before, and in the last half-hour or so a couple dozen Iranian ballistic missiles had been fired from western Iran at two US bases in Iraq.
The entire Iranian military is on alert and stress levels are particularly high. There's been a lot of chatter about a likely US response to the Iranian missiles and our guy is one of several teams positioned around Tehran tasked with shooting down anything on his radar screen that fits the profile. But as the hours pass without incident, he starts to doubt he'll see any action - at least, not tonight.
By 6am the only thing he can report having seen on his radar screen are each of the 9 scheduled flights that departed the nearby airport that night. He watched them take normal flight paths off the northwest runway, climb into the clear night sky and then veer north or northeast. Since the Tor-M1 system he is operating is fitted with IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) functionality, he could even see their call signs. The second-to-last one was Qatar Airways Flight QR8408 heading for Hong Kong.
© flightradar24.comClick to enlarge - Flight paths of the 10 flights that left Khomeini Airport that night (before, during and after the Iranian airstrikes)
© flightradar24.comClick to enlarge - Flight paths of the 10 flights that left Khomeini Airport that night (before, during and after the Iranian airstrikes)
For some as yet unknown reason, our guy had suddenly become convinced that the Boeing 737 was an 'enemy target'. As per protocol, he had requested authorization to launch, but his superiors could not be reached because of 'some problem with the communication network'. Again according to protocol, he had a 10-second window in which to decide whether to launch or not. Still convinced the 737 was a cruise missile or enemy aircraft, he launched the two missiles that sealed the fate of the 178 people on board.
The Iranian government and military has taken full responsibility for the shooting down of Flight 752, but no one has yet explained why a presumably well-trained missile system operator, having watched 9 commercial airliners fly past him that night, was so convinced that the 10th one was an enemy target that he made a decision - by himself - to shoot it down.
Iran purchased 29 Tor-M1 air-defense systems from Russia in late 2005. A Stratfor email dated 2009 and published by Wikileaks in 2012 revealed that they may have quickly become compromised:
"when a hacker or malicious individual impersonates another user or device on a network, duping users or systems into believing they are communicating or interacting with a different person or website."In military terms however, spoofing usually refers to radar-spoofing and involves capturing enemy radar signals and sending them back in an altered format in order to confuse the radar operator about what he is seeing.
A few years ago, US weapons manufacturers began rolling out these EW units for operational use by the US Navy and Air Force:
"U.S. Navy airborne electronic warfare (EW) experts are continuing their support of radar-spoofing electronic warfare (EW) technology from Mercury Systems Inc. that can fool enemy radar systems with false and deceptively moving targets."That the anti-spoofing upgrade was added to the later version exposes a vulnerability in the Tor-M1 system that shot down the Ukrainian plane - a vulnerability which allowed an enemy to potentially "impersonate another [target] on a network, duping [operators] into believing they are communicating or interacting with a different [aircraft]."
Another way that the Tor-M1 system (and operator) could have been 'spoofed' that night is through alteration of the identifying signals sent by the transponder on the Ukrainian airliner. The newer ADS-B transponder systems that are today on most airliners are known to be vulnerable to hacking. Of most concern to transport authorities is the potential for hackers to inject 'ghost aircraft' into the ATC system, but it is equally possible for a hacker to inject data directly into the aircraft's ADS-B so that it transmits false data about its identity, location, speed and direction.
In 2012, researchers from the Air Force Institute of Technology showed that a variety of "false injection" attacks can be readily coded on a commercial software-defined radio platform and launched from the ground or air with a cheap antenna. Attacks could cause aircraft to believe a collision is imminent, flood the airspace with hundreds of false transmissions, or prevent reception of legitimate messages.
Rich Kids of Tehran
Another curious part of the official story of the shoot-down of the Ukrainian plane involves a clique of Iranians who were responsible for documenting and distributing video footage of the missile launch and its impact with the plane, the crash, and photographs of what are allegedly the remains of the Tor-M1 missile.
On January 9th, an Instagram account called 'Rich Kids of Tehran' - described as "a popular social media account showcasing Iran's young and wealthy as they flaunt their wealth and jet around the world" - posted a video showing what was apparently a mid-air explosion. That same day, the New York Times contacted the administrator of the 'Rich Kids of Tehran' account and received the video in high resolution, and later confirmed its authenticity.
Additional footage subsequently released by unknown sources included CCTV camera footage from the vicinity of the crash site and which captured the moment of impact. A day later someone released alleged images of the missile that struck the plane.
Why one or more people associated with the 'Rich Kids of Tehran' - whose claim to fame in Iran is to be seen "brazenly driving Porsches and Maseratis through Tehran before the eyes of the poor" - happened to be in a low-income housing estate on the city's outskirts at 6am on the morning of January 8th with cameras pointed at the right part of the sky in time to capture a missile hitting a Ukrainian passenger plane, is anyone's guess. Although it is rather suspicious.
Who Would Induce Iran To Do This?
To have any chance of correctly understanding the shoot-down of the Ukrainian civilian airliner, it must be seen as a political rather than a military incident. A few days beforehand, the US had killed General Soleimani, an egregious attack on Iranian national pride. When Iran responded with pin-point accurate missile strikes on two US bases in Iraq, the score was - more or less - equal, as far as both parties were concerned.
You could argue, in fact, that Iran came out of the affair looking stronger and with more respect than when it entered. But all of that was undone with the shoot-down of the Ukrainian plane. Iran now appeared militarily inept, was forced to apologize to the world and protest groups in the country have used the tragedy to increase their calls for 'regime change'.
The bottom line is that the claim that "panic and poor training" led the operator of the missile system to fire on a civilian airliner is not credible, particularly when a more reasonable explanation exists. The problem, however, is that the methods which were likely used to fool the operator left no trace or evidence that could be presented after the fact. Over the course of perhaps a couple of minutes, temporary and convincing data was presented to the operator, and he acted on it.
So while Iran shot down the Ukrainian plane, it was not responsible for doing so. If you're looking for those responsible, it would make sense to look to those who have been most vocal about the Iranian threat over a long period of time, have the most to gain from making Iran 'look bad', and who have a track record - a motto even - of waging war, or achieving their geopolitical goals, by deception.
Or we could look back 19 years at a report produced by the School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth that details a plan for enforcing a major Israeli-Palestinian peace accord which would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly-created Palestinian state.
Reader Comments
We had treasonous members within the US political/security system assisting with the 911 deception, it is very likely that some members of the Iranian power structure have been compromised in the same manner by the same people.
is "is pure speculation."
Aeneas Remember the Liberty?
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Bellingcat: "It's only yellow rain. Trust us."
R.C.
You name the country that is struggling to maintain its own sovereignty in the face of globalism and imperialism and I can show you the Fifth Column rising from the wealth of the countries elite.
I've met a few of these Rich Kids over the years, their parents paying for them to hide/promote their political agenda in Canada. They seem to have one thing in common; they are all brainwashed, entitled Greta Thunberg.
I got to U.F., and there were kids who couldn't fix anything, would take a new car back to the dealer because the LIGHTER didn't work*, and who,on average drove one of their parents' 3 year old cars.
Me? It was 78 and I was driving a 68 ford Fairlane (no AC) that I'd bought for $150, (and worked on constantly.)
T'was then I came up with a term for such brats: 'Larks', as in 'out on a lark' (wasting time) etc., PLUS THIS: Little Assh*le Rich Kids. (L.A.R.K.s)
RC
Another is the development of deceit as a primary weapon of war through the ability to hack.
This does not establish foul play - but it shows vectors by which it could have been done.
Iran will no doubt investigate - but without being able to prove its case it would have a worse effect to persist in evading responsibility.
"It's hard to dance with the devil on your back" ~ Sidney Carter
I dare say that IF the FUKUSraHell could 'spoof' radar - and they almost certainly could have here (odds >95%), they damn sure would have likewise hacked that phone system to prevent the poor kid from getting permission etc.
R.C.
'Designed by clowns and supervised by monkeys': Senate investigation into Boeing air disasters reveals what employees thought of 737-MAX
Comment: Ouf, this is a bad look! Newly released internal emails from Boeing Co. paint a disturbing picture of its 737 Max program, with employees bragging about fooling FAA regulators and...R.C.
The dominant narrative seems to be focussing mainly on the plane that was shot down, while the context that this occurred is mentioned in passing but not duly noted. I mean a week ago Iranians were united mourning Qassem Soleimani, now a short time later the anti-regime protests are out again. What! Who the hell are they listening to?
The missile batteries sold to Iran that the Russians gave the Israelis the code, well, I think the Russians have been sloppy here at best, especially since the coup in Ukraine in 2014. 6
Anyway, ...6 years ago. The Israelis and the empire will exploit any backdoor opportunity, so why make it easy for them? I hope they act quick to address these problems.
In general, there is a lot of chaos in the world, but how many times does one have to get burned before the penny drops?
Assuming the exchange of military codes did take place, the following Ynet article about it includes something mentioned in the Wikileaks email that points to why.
In exchange for giving Israel codes to access the network of Iranian Tor-M1s, Russia got codes from Israel for drones it had sold to Georgia - and this happened on the eve of the Russia-Georgia war in 2008.
Right there, you can see that Russia's immediate interests closer to home would be more important than 'betraying' Iran to a third country. [Link]
What a turn around over the last few days or so regarding the recent protests eh? The Americans are salivating again over regime change. Amazing that they have the brass neck to order Iran to start behaving like a normal country! Bizarro world!
Thinking about Russia's influence in the ME, and what they want to achieve, well, they cannot oppose the Israelis, and have to consider their interests to some degree. Realpolitik and all.
"What's a reality-creator to do in the face of encroaching reality? Double-down!"R.C.
Iran Air flight 655 , flight of an Iranian airliner that was shot down by the missile cruiser USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board. The passenger plane, which was in Iranian airspace, had been incorrectly identified as a fighter jet. [Link]
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R.C.
Best of the Web: "We accept full responsibility'' - Watch IRGC press conference confessing accidental downing of Ukrainian plane
Commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Amir-Ali Hajizadeh has, in a press conference, outlined the details of the "unintentional" downing of a Ukrainian...The Iranian's admit to shooting down a plane whereas the Americans cannot even admit they received a tip off
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[Link] This demonstration of Iranian capability - and thus exposure of US/NATO vulnerability - is likely what the shoot-down of the Ukraine Airlines plane was meant to obscure; the new reality that US military might is vulnerable - spread out as it is across the globe - to modern missiles.
The best memoir, IMHO, is Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, a French poilu. Free: [Link]
R.C.
Defending a despotic regime in Iran, which was placed there through a revolution that deposed an elected leader may be showing your bias.
That you interpret that as "defending a despotic regime in Iran" most certainly shows YOUR bias.
It was even on CNN!!!
In a separate statement, Rouhani called the missile launch an “unforgivable mistake,” and he said officials must “address the weaknesses of the nation’s defense systems to make sure such a disaster is never repeated.”
Iran's strategic intent is to withstand U.S. pressure and to show defiance. Closing the airspace would have contradicted that objective. The shooting down of flight PS752 happened during a tactical engagement by a small mobile unit which did what it was supposed to do. Communication fuck-ups happen all the time during war like situations. They often cause casualties but are unavoidable.
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Do we have a list of all the other 9 flights
The twitter account that was one of the first to disseminate the images of the "missile" before Iran military admitted has also worked with the Ukrainian airforce for 6 years on a book which is pro Ukrainian and anti-Russian. He was also providing real time coverage of the first night of protests which was specifically linked to the plane. The same individual's voice was also giving interviews to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from Germany. This person "Babak Taghvaee" also claims to be an ex-aircraft technician on his medium bio. I think they targeted a Ukrainian plane and hoped it would be hit becausea) the same organization has an inside connection with Ukraine aviation (if the asd-b was to be spoofed) b) Ukraine follows US orders c) if they had hit one of the Lufthansa, Qatar, Turkish, Russian planes which left earlier that night, who knows what those countries might have done. Erdogan is unpredictable.
In my opinion there does or did exist an individual called Babak T. with technical aviation knowledge who wrote books on planes. Whether or not he is connected to the twitter account which is obviously a well funded organization, who knows. It is entirely possible that the hitting of the Ukrainian plane was a random outcome of the tense situation. But it is also fairly probable that it was not random. The protests were likely planned anyway. If the plane had not been hit, some other false flag would have been pulled.
Iran loses the very leaders that Trump had tried to bolster, leaving a neighbour's arrangements to usher in a new regime.
It took out a major general, in return it only lost a bunch of empty buildings.... Does it matter that Iran had precision missiles? Iran will never use those against anything non-symbolic unless it intends it to be its last act of existence as the US will wipe it off the face of the planet.
The plane going down is clearly an attempt to put pressure on the Iranian regime which now have to react to internal and external existential pressures. They can try to counter this by taking the moral high ground but that doesn't change the fact they've been outmanoeuvred by a predatory force.
Iran has lost more than the US is the bottom line.
'Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!!!" What we need are more Totos. (No, and not the pop group.)
R.C.
The plane vanished mid-air, and in no ordinary way: from one second to the other - no transponder, no pilot communication, no ACARS, no data form the engine monitoring system....it literally went totally dark....and yet it is supposed to have flown another 10 nautic miles after having been hit by a couple of modern-day state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missile. It defies logic.
The transponder, ACARS and all other forms of communication from this top modern aircraft stopped working at exactly the same time....which is virtually impossible and completely improbable.
Wow. They've started using rubber planes.
Amazing.
Deputy Chief of Armed Forces: Possibility of 'infiltration' and 'electronic war' on Ukrainian plane crash.
been fired at the country, the cruise missile flying at very low altitude," said the deputy chief of the Armed Forces Staff Coordinator in describing the conditions of the disaster or limited fire. Adjusting itself to the ground; detecting cruise missiles with radar at all locations may not happen, so we have set up monitors at various locations and even get reports from people.He continued: "After a while the center of the situation turns red, the communication system is disrupted and it does not receive the exit from the red state, in which case the operator sees the aircraft system as an approaching target and unfortunately shoots at it.
from the cruise missile, he said: "When the radar catches the plane, its altitude is about 5 to 5 meters." On the other hand, the aircraft was flying at zero radar, meaning it had the lowest radar cross section. The operator of the system was in a situation where his communication was interrupted or interrupted while this is being investigated and here an individual error occurs and the missile fires.
** Possibility of penetration is under consideration
"The possibility is being investigated by our intelligence system," said the Deputy Coordinator of the Armed Forces General Staff regarding the possibility of infiltration
Also see this Guardian article from June 23 2019 US launched cyber attack on Iranian rockets and missiles – reports
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The NYT now has a second video of the missile strike. This has all the features of an absolute setup to embarrass Iran.
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"In a single take, let's suggest that the official Iranian story about the mistaken missile strike against Ukraine International Airline PS752 over northern Iran is a deep fake"
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MH370, MH17 (even this had the "going dark scenario" prior to the downing), AH5017, QZ8501 where all lost to the world in the blink of an eye. An "everything-normal" situation turning into a mysterious, complete annihilation within a breath. In almost all other cases where an aircraft have problems, there are distress calls, beacons working, transponders working, radar signatures etc.
What these cases (also including 4U9525, 7K 9268, MS804 and now the Iranian case) all share, is that the plane virtually disappears in the blink of an eye, only to reemerge under strange circumstances, raising volumes of questions...that is never adequately answered. Virtually every time the first footage emerges, it looks extremely suspicious and raises more questions than it answers.
It points towards a scenario where someone/something masters some kind of scalar electromagnetic technology that allows STEM manipulation. Only problem is that even though we can predict what scalar technologies will enable us to do - it will not be feasible until sometime in the future.
Consider this conjecture : The plane was "taken out"/"displaced" and replaced with something else that subsequently was shot down by the air defense systems....
As re beam or dimensional weapons? 20 years ago, I would have been far more skeptical than I am now.
Comperio: Open mind at work.
R.C.
Quantum mechanics suggests how reality becomes information and thus processing. In this light “time” becomes more malleable and a vector to move along, just as “computation” becomes a natural phenomenon. This opens up for conjecture about causality as a systemic quality.
Future usage of scalar- and quantum technologies will – in theory - allow for sending information back in time. This leaves room for the possibility of interference of a kind that is almost unfathomable.
Given many similarities across all of the mentioned incidents, it is reasonable to argue that there could be a common signature, indicating some sort of involvement from a “systemic/computational” entity.
The Iran case and the case of MH-17 has a further commonality; both incidents changed the trajectory of war and led to (forced) de-escalation...
1. Who is it that always shoots down civilian airliners and similar targets? -> The US and Israel.
2. What is the result of this incident? -> Iran looks bad.
3. Who benefits from Iran looking bad? -> The US and Israel.
4. Does the explanation given by US authorities and media make sense? -> Nope.
Either you can do the math, or you're a lost cause.
R.C.
This is wrongly described, and distorting the truth. The plane's transponder WAS working until the first missile hit it, and reporting data to Flightradar. The missile took it out. The plane made a sharp turn BECAUSE OF THE MISSILE HITTING IT. It wasn't under control of the pilots as it's thought that they were all dead from the first missile hit, which hit the cockpit. Please do proper research e.g. talk to pilots and then amend your article. Then it will be more credible. I do agree with you that there was interference, ie changing the transponder signal and jamming the comms,- that's why it's very important to be precise, so we can nail down the discrepancies. Please keep reporting and investigating your suspicions so the truth doesn't get hidden.
E.g., How many black boxes were NOT found on 9/11/2001?
I wonder if the AmeriKant will plant a politically useful passport at the crash site. (
We'veIt's gotten so pathetically predictable.)R,C, RC
Well, it just seemed like yourself and Niall included might have been thinking about throwing in the towel, if you did I’m glad you didn’t.
Quoting RC above ‘ PS Joe: You were WAY ahead of the curve on this one.’
This happened there in 2011:
Flashback Best of the Web: Wikileaks Stratfor email: Israel behind blast that killed 36 IRGC troops at Iranian missile base in 2011
Comment: This interests us today because it's the same location from which missiles were fired at Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 last week - Shahid Moddares missile base, near the village of...The Israelis appear to have fired cruise missiles at it, killing 36 IRGC troops, including an IRGC general overseeing their surface-to-surface missile program.
Then too the Iranians covered it up, describing it as 'an accident'.
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I'm surprised that Ukraine's apparently the source of this.
CIA, or other PTB flunky group: "Dammit! We expect countries that once bought, stay bought!"
RC
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RC
Edit addition: (re infra) Soon you'll be on Casey Kasem's 'Top 40'!
Oh, BTW, please see my comment re wrong county named, et al. here:
Denver coroner raises concern on deaths among COVID cases
The Grand County coroner is calling attention to the way the state health department is classifying some deaths. The coroner, Brenda Bock, says two of their five deaths related to COVID-19 were...Thanks!
RC
I don't.
Evidence is evidence and I want to know what the evidence is because.
Justice Must Be Served.
When a man is assassinated, a man of influence, there our consequences and the consequences have only just begun for those perpetuating this Crime Against Humanity. We know who you are and we are coming to bring you to a Court of Law to face Lady Libra - she holds the scales and she suffers no fools.
Not kidding around.
BK
Historian: 'Ukrainian authorities deliberately sent MH17 airliner into warzone'
Russia's Ministry of Defense has presented audio proof of Ukraine's links to the downing of Flight MH17 in 2014. During the press briefing in Moscow, the ministry said that Kiev could destroy...