What in the world did they hope to gain by this? They could not have done this in error since commercial aircraft all carry transponders as identification.
One needs to be a first- or second-world society to understand this.
Islam has them stuck in the 8th century as a third-world nation.
Exactly - I would tend to think it was either a mistake by one of their folks having a pucker moment - or a deliberate sabotage by a Soleimani supporter who wants a war - makes no sense at all as a sanctioned action.
What in the world did they hope to gain by this? They could not have done this in error since commercial aircraft all carry transponders as identification.”
The Iranian air defense people screwed up is the likely explanation. They panicked in the middle of Irans attacks.
I posted this the morning after the missile attack:
You can bet your ass that, knowing there were going to be missile launches into Iraq, Iranian air defense batteries were placed on a “weapons free” status. Some moron(s) in the Iranian air defense corps, fearing an immediate retaliatory attack, were a little too trigger happy and unloaded on a “low-flying unidentified aircraft on an attack profile.”
You can also count on the fact that we know exactly what happened to that aircraft...
They absolutely could have done this “by accident”. The Patriot missile system has an “automatic mode” that will fire without the operator command.
The Iranians were expecting a possible strike by the USAF that night. They had their air defenses on the highest alert. Probably somebody at Tehran airport was supposed to hold departing flights on the ground and didn’t.
As JFK said during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “There’s always some dumb sonovabitch who doesn’t get The Word.”
Trigger-happy Iranian troops on the ground did not have the equipment to read a transponder, they saw something in the sky and shot it down.
The Russians shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Apparently the Russian missile systems still have issues/