​IRAN: Admission of guilt for downing plane is a risk-off development

GULF COUNTRIES - In Brief 11 Jan 2020 by Justin Alexander

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For three days, Iran insisted that the crash of Flight 752 to Ukraine on Wednesday was due to mechanical error, despite the coincidence of it happening just hours of Iran’s counterstrike on US bases in Iraq. This was maintained despite mounting evidence and accusations from Canada’s prime minister. Finally, this morning the military announced on state TV that it had indeed been shot down by a missile due to human error as the country was on high alert for a possible US attack. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued an apology. Unfortunately, the handling of the event mirrors a common pattern in the Middle East of denial and then passing the buck to junior officials, who will be put on trial (see the Khashoggi murder, albeit in this case the incident was unintentional).However, tragic though the downing was, killing 167 people, we think it could actually help reduce regional tensions. This is the second indirect tragedy resulting from the recent US-Iran tensions, following the killing of over 50 people in a stampede at General Soleimani’s funeral. The government is responsible in both cases, for failures in crowd management and an itchy trigger finger (and clear weaknesses with an air defence system that could not differentiate between an enemy jet and a civilian plane that has just taken off from the country’s main airport). Although there are international dimensions to Flight 752, as there were at least a dozen foreign nationals aboard and many others with dual nationality, mainly Canadian, most of the victims were Iranians. The government’s denials this week have been met with anger domestically as well as internationally. This all means that it will need to...