[NY Attitude]

Wasn't that one of the reasons that the USS Vincenes shot down the Iranian Airliner because it was squawking code that identified it as a hostile aircraft?

[ASA Vet]

Reports at the time, (which were quickly squashed,) was that the Iranian Airlines wasn't squawking anything.
The airline was coming directly toward the Vincenes, and the "passengers" were already dead.
There were also a couple short lived reports that an Iranian F-14 was directly behind the so called commercial airliner.
The F-14 was detected resulting in the shoot down.
That theory indicates a deliberate Iranian plan to get us to shoot down the airliner.

[ASA Vet]

See post #58 and #60.

[USNBandit]

I don't know about that, but they did have the aircraft flying into the middle of an ongoing surface battle between the Vincenes and several small speed boats.