Excellent NYT article this morning on the abortive Iranian attempt at a coverup. They combine public info that I haven't seen in the English media before with highly-placed sources to report some of what happened behind the scenes, and the result is a disturbing picture of dysfunction between the elected, military, and clerical arms of Iran's government.
nytimes (dot) com/2020/01/26/world/middleeast/iran-plane-crash-coverup.html (Sorry, can't post links.)
Some particularly interesting bits:
But in a tragic miscalculation, the government continued to allow civilian commercial flights to land and take off from the Tehran airport.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Guards’ Aerospace Force, said later that his units had asked officials in Tehran to close Iran’s airspace and ground all flights, to no avail.
Iranian officials feared that shutting down the airport would create mass panic that war with the United States was imminent, members of the Guards and other officials told The Times. They also hoped that the presence of passenger jets could act as a deterrent against an American attack on the airport or the nearby military base, effectively turning planeloads of unsuspecting travelers into human shields.
By Wednesday night, the committee had concluded that the plane was shot down because of human error.
“We were not confident about what happened until Wednesday around sunset,” General Salami, the commander in chief of the Guards, said later in a televised address to the Parliament. “Our investigative team concluded then that the plane crashed because of human errors.”
Ayatollah Khamenei was informed. But they still did not inform the president, other elected officials or the public.
On Friday morning, Mr. Rabiei issued a statement saying the allegation that Iran had shot down the plane was “a big lie.”
Several hours later, the nation’s top military commanders called a private meeting and told Mr. Rouhani the truth.
Mr. Rouhani was livid, according to officials close to him. He demanded that Iran immediately announce that it had made a tragic mistake and accept the consequences.
The military officials pushed back, arguing that the fallout could destabilize the country.
Mr. Rouhani threatened to resign. [...]
As the standoff escalated, a member of Ayatollah Khamenei’s inner circle who was in the meeting informed the supreme leader. The ayatollah sent a message back to the group, ordering the government to prepare a public statement acknowledging what had happened.
Iran’s National Security Council held an emergency meeting and drafted two statements, the first to be issued by the Joint Armed Forces followed by a second one from Mr. Rouhani.
As they debated the wording, some suggested claiming that the United States or Israel may have contributed to the accident by jamming Iran’s radars or hacking its communications networks.
But the military commanders opposed it. General Hajizadeh said the shame of human error paled compared with admitting his air defense system was vulnerable to hacking by the enemy.
Iran’s Civil Aviation Agency later said that it had found no evidence of jamming or hacking.