Iranian Foreign Minister hid UIA plane downing by order – Mass media

In March 2020, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gave an interview to Iranian economist Saeed Laylaz. This conversation wasn't to be published. However, journalists from Iran International, headquartered in London, received a copy of the audio recordings and released them.

According to Hromadske, the recordings were also shared with New York Times journalists.

According to journalists, the interview wasn't planned to be broadcast, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs repeated several times on audio that the conversation wasn't public.

Thus, during the conversation, Zarif mentioned the crash of the UIA plane, which was shot down on January 8, 2020, near Tehran. The minister allegedly noted that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was immediately aware that the plane had been shot down. At the same time, for several more days, the country's authorities denied this.

After the plane crashed, Zarif attended a meeting of the National Security Council with two senior military commanders and demanded an explanation for the accident, the NYT writes. According to him, the commanders attacked him and told him to write a tweet stating that "the news (about the downing of the plane – ed.) is not true."

"I said if it was hit by a rocket, say it so we know how to fix it. God knows how they reacted to me as if I denied the existence of God," Zarif was quoted by the NYT.

According to BBC Persian, after the interview leaked, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed the conversation between Zarif and Laylaz but said that it shouldn't have been published. He said parts of the audio were published selectively and the conversation was "distorted."

As reported by Rubryka, the plane of Ukraine International Airlines, which was flying PS-752 on the route Tehran-Kyiv, crashed in Iran on January 8, 2020.

Citizens of six countries were on board: Iran, Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan, and the United Kingdom. All 176 people on the plane died, including 11 Ukrainians.

After several days of objections, the Iranian authorities admitted that the plane had been shot down by an anti-aircraft missile system.

On February 20, 2021, Iran announced the completion of the case investigation.

On March 17, 2021, the Iranian civil aviation authority published the final report on the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane in January 2020.

The document states that the reason for the decision to shoot down the plane was the mistake of the air defense operator, who identified the plane as an "enemy object."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Iran's report an attempt to hide the real causes of the crash, and his deputy, Yevhen Yenin, said that Ukraine would demand ICAO Council to consider Iran's report on the UIA plane crash and the Iranian technical investigation to resume and continue.

Also, the United States intends to help Ukraine bring Iran to justice for the downing of a UIA Boeing in the skies over Tehran and the death of its crew and passengers.