It was deliberate. That launcher also has the systems to monitor and identify civilian aircraft. Either they turned it off, it was damaged, or they disregarded it. The aircraft was not flying in a protected no-fly zone. It was deliberate.
As for your reference to the Iranian airliner, you would be best advised to educate yourself before making ANY inferences
Iran Air Flight 655 (July 3, 1988)
An August 1988 report from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the shoot-down of an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf by a U.S. guided missile cruiser “a tragic and regrettable accident,” adding, “[A]s is so often the case in a combat environment, there were a number of contributing factors.”
Those factors included the 1987 attack on the USS Stark during the Iran-Iraq War, by an Iraqi fighter jet whose pilot — reportedly mistaking the U.S. warship for an Iranian oil tanker — fired Exocet missiles at the Stark off the coast of Saudi Arabia, near the war zone. Thirty-seven American crew members were killed.
Other tensions in the waters off Iran, as well as reports of Iranian attempts to improve their ability to attack American ships, led to a change in the rules of engagement with perceived or possible threats to U.S. assets. The day before the Iran Air incident, on July 2, the USS Halsey warned away a potentially threatening Iranian F-14.
On July 3, the USS Vincennes and the frigate USS Montgomery were engaging several small Iranian boats challenging a Pakistani merchant ship.
At the same time, Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus A300 B2-203, took off from a joint civilian/military air field in Bandar Abbas, destination Dubai. There were 290 people on board, including 16 crewmembers.
Bandar Abbas was the same air field from which Iranian F-4s were launched in support of attacks on U.S. Naval forces in April.
“It is hard to overemphasize the fact that Bandar Abbas is also a military airfield,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff report said. “The Air Bus was probably not informed of the surface action taking place in the Strait. Informed or not, Flight 655 logically appeared to have a direct relationship to the ongoing surface engagement.”
The Vincennes was tracking an Iranian P-3 military aircraft, flying approximately 60 nautical miles northwest, when it saw the unidentified aircraft, flying within a known commercial air corridor, with a transponder signal that appeared to identify the craft as an F-14. It did not respond to radio warnings.
With the plane’s distance at nine miles and coming closer, descending to an altitude of 13,000 feet, it was deemed a threat to the Vincennes. Surface-to-air missiles were fired.
The 290 victims included Iranian nationals as well as citizens of the United Arab Emirates, India, Pakistan, Yugoslavia and Italy.
The Joint Chiefs Chairman’s report states, “I believe that the actions of Iran were the proximate cause of this accident and would argue that Iran must bear the principal responsibility for the tragedy. . . . It was especially reprehensible to allow an airliner to take off from a joint ‘military/civilian’ airfield and fly directly into the midst of a gunfight. As for the aircraft itself, its failure not to monitor the international air distress net and not to respond to challenges was significantly negligent.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/past-commercial-airliners-shot-down-by-military-rebels/
That may become obvious shortly here.
This plane may have been targeted for no other reason than that it was coming from the West -- from the direction of Kiev -- and both are linked together in Russian minds and hated.
If the plane was flying north-south they would not have touched it but west-east was fair game.
And look at the net effect of the downing of MH17 -- the once highly travelled air corridor over eastern Ukraine has been shut down causing now greater difficulty and expense for airlines travelling east-west.
This is Putin punishing the West for its sanctions against Russia.