Distress Over Unintentional Deaths

“Iran deeply regrets disastrous mistake with Ukrainian plane – Rouhani” – TASS

I feel sure that the Iranian government and its people feel genuine distress at having been the instruments of so many deaths on the Ukrainian Airlines flight downed unintentionally a few days ago at the height of a tense military stand-off between Iran and the US.

I have two things to say about that.

1. What on Earth was a commercial airline flight doing in the air in a known and widely published region of conflict in the first place? Whoever authorised that carries a huge portion of any blame for the incident.

2. The Iranian authorities are quite justified in calling out the true cause as being “US adventurism” – which it clearly was. No Iranian missiles would have been launched that day if the US had not unjustifiably murdered Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani and others a few days earlier.

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Distress Over Unintentional Deaths

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