Iran: Parliament Lauds Military for ‘Heartwarming’ Admission They Shot Down Ukrainian Plane
Iran’s parliament passed a statement of support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, on Sunday for its “heartwarming” admission that one of its members shot down a Ukrainian commercial airliner last week.
The Iranian authoritarian regime admitted last week, after two days of vehement denials and destruction of evidence, that unidentified soldiers had shot down Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) flight 752 in the early hours of Wednesday as it took off from Tehran with a Russian Tor missile. The shootdown occurred as Iran lobbed over a dozen missiles in the direction of Iraqi military bases housing U.S. troops, the regime’s official response to the U.S. airstrike that eliminated IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani.
The U.S. army took out Soleimani and the founder of the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, this month based on reports that they were plotting imminent attacks against Americans. Soleimani had been reportedly operating in Iraq for several months to kill and repress protests against Iran’s attempted colonization of the country.
Despite Iranian military officials insisting for days that it was “obvious” they had not shot down the UIA flight, only to later accept responsibility amid mounting international pressure, Iranian lawmakers applauded the IRGC’s alleged honesty in the matter.
“We, the representatives of people in the parliament, declare our firm support for the IRGC as a revolutionary body and its plans and measures in support of the people and the Islamic Republic,” the statement read, according to Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency. “We do not forget that we are in powerful confrontation with the criminal US and do not allow a mistake by a member of the family to pave the ground for misusing the issue by the enemies.”
Radio Farda, an American government-funded Iranian news outlet, noted also that the statement described bombing the plane as a “family member’s mistake” and applauded the IRGC for admitting its responsibility.
“The IRGC’s admission was deeply heartwarming,” the statement said. The statement also referred to the bombing of Iraqi military bases as “highly praiseworthy.” Baghdad and Tehran are nominal allies.
Joining the regime’s rubber-stamp legislature, its National Security Council also absolved the IRGC of any blame in lying about the fate of the doomed airliner.
“There was no intention to cover up the reasons behind this incident from the very beginning, taking into account that such a cover-up was actually impossible in view of the nature and technical characteristics of the crash,” Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Ali Shamkhani said on Sunday. “The announcement of the real cause of the Ukrainian plane crash took some time due to the necessity of examining all the possible theories, including ‘possible enemy actions in jamming’, ‘hacking of systems’, ‘infiltration [of enemy agents]’, and other related factors.”
Notably, Shamkhani reportedly claimed that it was “impossible” to cover up shooting down the airplane even if Iran wanted to do so.
Ali Rabiee, a spokesman for the senior leadership of the Iranian regime, also “admired the General Staff of the Armed Forces for its transparency about what happened,” according to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency on Monday.
“Speaking at a weekly press conference on Monday, Ali Rabiee said the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces did an admirable job on Saturday when it candidly accepted responsibility for the downing of the Ukrainian jetliner and declared that the plane was shot down due to a human error,” Tasnim noted. “Taking responsibility for the incident was a praiseworthy move and a good beginning, Rabiee said, stressing that this transparency will definitely continue until the end of the investigations.”
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2020/01/13/iran-parliament-lauds-military-heartwarming-admission-they-shot-down-ukrainian-plane/
Thinking the Iranian parliament needs rethink it's support or risk being strung up in the streets when the Ayatollah steps down…