Iran, technology, and ideology
Some people have advanced a theory to explain Iran’s failure to do damage to US personnel in Iraq in this latest attack: the Iranians missed on purpose. Well, maybe. But others strongly disagree:
The top US general made clear Wednesday night that he believes Iran meant to kill US troops in the ballistic missile attack on US forces in Iraq, rebutting a belief among some Trump administration officials that Iran intentionally missed areas populated by Americans.
“I believe based on what I saw and what I know that they were intended to cause structural damage destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft, and to kill personnel. That’s my own personal assessment,” said Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when speaking to reporters on Wednesday,Milley argued that the reason there were no casualties had “more to do with the defensive techniques that our forces used as opposed to intent.”
He added, “We took sufficient defensive measures that there were no casualties to US personnel, coalition personnel, contractors or Iraqis.”
So perhaps the failure was intentional, but I believe it was probably more a combination of an only so-so offense meeting an excellent defense.
And then there’s the possible (probable?) shooting down of the Ukrainian plane. Of course, perhaps the Iranians really intended to shoot down a commercial airliner full of Canadian-Iranians on their way back from visiting family in Iran. Perhaps. But I very much doubt it. I believe that, if the plane was indeed shot down (and at this point I think it was), it’s because it was misidentified by the Iranians as an incoming weapon of some sort. If that’s what happened, it would demonstrate a considerable and dangerous lack of basic coordination between Iran’s commercial aviation system and its air defense.
If I’m correct about all of this (and I rely on my more scientifically informed readers to correct me if I’m wrong), it means that Iran is in some technological trouble, although of course they are still making weapons that can do damage, and getting some effective weapons from other countries like Russia. But Iran’s brain drain has probably been quite intense, and much of Iran’s best and brightest may have fled the country over the years.
I noticed, for example, that a large number of the Canadian-Iranian victims of the Ukrainian crash were students or professors in the sciences who were studying or employed in Canada. Maybe they were there because they were seeking more liberty in general, as is often true of Iranian expats who live in the west. Maybe they were there because the instruction and opportunities in science are better in the west. And/or maybe so many were there because any scientist in Iran must toe the ideological line, and enquiring scientific minds don’t tend to run in the direction the mullahs demand. If political (and in Iran’s case, religious) orthodoxy and conformance are required of all scientists and the science they produce, that can handicap scientific rigor and success.
Which doesn’t mean that weapons can’t be produced and used – they can – but the level of precision and the amount of innovation is probably reduced from what it would be if thought control wasn’t imposed.
Unfortunately, the trend is also towards thought control in the west now, as the social justice warriors complete their takeover of the university. They started with the humanities, because it was easier and the ground far more fertile. But they have encroached on science and math as well, and that’s not good for those disciplines.
It’s already happening (the linked article is from two and a half years ago):
Engineering education has been infiltrated by a “phalanx of social justice warriors” who are steadily corrupting the field, according to a Michigan State University professor.
“They have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering, where phrases such as ‘diversity’ and ‘different perspectives’ and ‘racial gaps’ and ‘unfairness’ and ‘unequal outcomes’ make up the daily vocabulary,” asserts Mechanical Engineering professor Indrek Wichman in an essay published Wednesday by the James G. Martin Center.
“Instead of calculating engine horsepower or microchip power/size ratios or aerodynamic lift and drag, the engineering educationists focus on group representation, hurt feelings, and ‘microaggressions’ in the profession,” Wichman adds.
Citing the Purdue University School of Education Engineering as a case study, Wichman claims that “engineering education” schools increasingly focus on concepts that are incompatible with the actual discipline, such as “empowering” students and “reimagining” engineering as a more “socially connected” field of study.
“For the record, engineers ‘empower’ themselves and, most important, other people, by inventing things,” he points out. “Those things are our agents of change.”
Wichman goes on to highlight the “ambitious agenda” of Dr. Donna Riley, the recently appointed dean of Purdue’s engineering school, as an example of the extent of social justice “infiltration” at the school.
According to her faculty page, Riley aims to “revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destination” by incorporating “concerns related to…social responsibility,” focusing on “de-centering Western civilization,” and “uncovering contributions of women and other underrepresented groups.”
…[E]thnomathematics is also used to explain why the tough stuff, and even math itself, isn’t important — and can thus be ignored. Some math educators say culturally defined math is a human “right.”
To be jettisoned (says one the book’s authors) are the “criteria of validity, reliability, and objectivity as they are understood and applied in scientific paradigm research.” In their place will come an intense awareness of “social class,” diversity, equality, and all the other standard goals of modern academia…
Take two influential organizations, the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) and TODOS: Mathematics for ALL. They state that they “ratify social justice as a key priority in the access to, engagement with, and advancement in mathematics education for our country’s youth.”
They say, “a social justice stance interrogates and challenges the roles power, privilege, and oppression play in the current unjust system of mathematics education-and in society as a whole.”
Forty years ago, when the Iranian revolution occurred, I followed it on the news. Those of you old enough probably recall following it, too. At the time I was puzzled by the coming together of the left and the fundamentalist Islamists like Khomeini, uniting in order to overthrow the shah and his government. I didn’t realize back then that the left thought it was just using the mullahs and would easily outfox and supplant them as soon as the shah was gone. The mullahs though the reverse, and it turns out that the mullahs were the ones who got the last laugh.
But none of it should have surprised me, because fanatics dedicated to their ideology are birds of a feather, and both will end up crushing scientific thought by replacing enquiry with orthodoxy.
[NOTE: Here’s an example of what the Israelis are doing in terms of defense:
The Defense Ministry has made a technological breakthrough in the development of lasers that can intercept aerial threats, including rockets and anti-tank guided missiles, it announced Wednesday.
New laser technology “makes the security apparatus more lethal, more powerful and more advanced,” Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday evening. ]
An official statement from the Pentagon says an Iranian missile shot down the passenger jet. They also say it may have been accidental.
The airport control tower has a flight schedule and monitors aircraft with the plane’s transponder. They should publish schedule changes very promptly, and somebody in the military should stay in close contact with all of the above.
Having said that, there are many avenues for screw-ups. Both the U.S. and the Soviets have shot down passenger planes by mistake.
Re:social justice in the sciences. I’ve written about it before. Just before I retired last year, the department was told we were only teaching white male physics. These idiots somehow think that a black transgender would somehow get a different value for g (9.8m/s2). And , their result would be more valid than a white guys.
Physicsguy,
I am old enough to remember Hitler criticizing “Jewish Science”.
But of course the SJWs are “anti-nazi”, so it is not happening here.
/sarcism
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Abraham Lincoln
The “social justice movement” is not just a fatal blow to America’s educational system, it is a mortal threat to the very fabric of our society.
To reach its ultimate goal requires the evisceration of the 2nd amendment. Which is the ‘trigger wire’ for civil war.
As, the 2nd amendment is the ONLY physical obstruction to the ‘amending’ of our inalienable rights into revocable privileges granted by the State.
There is a reason why Islamic regimes have not produced top-level scientists, and why their use of technology is by imitation, rather than by innovation. It’s in the Islamic rejection of “philosophy,” that is, rational examination of the world, which occurred a thousand years ago.
It’s very disturbing to see American science programs denying science in favor of identity politics. There is no “black science” or “white science.” Either the engineering designs a product which will work as designed, or it doesn’t. The sex or ethnicity of the designer has nothing to do with it.
No idea why my comment above is by “uir.” It’s me, Kate.
This fits the Nazi idea that there is such a thing as “Aryan science” or “Jewish science.”
Although today’s “wokeness” or “progressivism” draws on both Marxist and Fascist/Nazi ideologies, I believe it is closer overall to the Fascist worldview.
Whereas Marxism is a bastard child of the Enlightenment, Fascism is explicitly counter-Enlightenment.
Well, if they were Iranian students at American universities, the real reason would be that American universities actively recruit foreign students because they pay full tuition. This is more extreme at the less-selective state universities.
Canadian universities may doing something similar.
Frederick:
Some may have been as you describe, but many (at least 63, maybe more) seem to have been Canadian citizens of Iranian ethnicity. Toronto and Edmonton have large Iranian communities of people who have emigrated, apparently.
I recall (the late ’70’s) an end of the year grad school physics exam where the only woman in our class almost talked her way out of taking the exam in lieu of a make-up exam. I was annoyed at having to listen to her litany of excuses to the prof. while trying to concentrate on the exam, but pleased that he was standing his ground.
She, a fair weather feminist, wouldn’t let it go. So they took it outside where we could still hear them through the open door. So, true to form, she pulled her ace card and started to cry. She got her make-up exam. But she didn’t talk her way out of it, she cried her way out. Were the tears real? Possibly, but that was entirely irrelevant to me at the time.
_____
Several years later I was work/studying at a laboratory where one of my pals had a fancy experiment and they bought a very expensive Hewlett Packard computer system that wasn’t working correctly. So HP flew a couple of their computer hotshots, a young man and woman, out to diagnose and update the system.
They made numerous phone calls back to headquarters, and at one point the man was on the phone in our group office and he asked his colleague to take notes that he would relay to her. Cell phones hadn’t been invented yet.
You have to appreciate that HP headquarters were in Palo Alto and was probably the most politically correct business environment in America.
She completely blew her top with shouting and cursing. They weren’t alone as the place was our group office.
How patriarchal of him. She wasn’t his secretary, they were equals. She worked hard to get there. And where was she supposed to produce a pen or notepad. After all, she was wearing very fashionable business attire, as expected of her, and as anyone who is not a male pig would know, there aren’t any places to put pens and notepads on her person. (I loved that last bit.)
If she had just said, F-you and walked off, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But the tirade went on and on.
I’m sure militant feminism serves many purposes for many people, but there are times when I think one purpose is for it to be an excuse for women to unleashed their inner ids.
_____
This stuff isn’t new, but what Neo mentions is much much worse, because it goes towards institutional and structural rot.
TommyJay:
You write “Both the U.S. and the Soviets have shot down passenger planes by mistake.”
I’m aware of that. But the planes they shot down were not planes that had just taken off from their own major airport. The Ukrainian flight was a regularly scheduled flight that took off from Tehran airport just a couple of minutes before being shot down, and had only reached an altitude of about 8,000 feet when it happened. And it was the Iranians themselves who shot it down.
That’s a different situation from the incidents you referenced, which I assume include this terrible event as well as this dreadful one. Both occurred over thirty years ago, which is no excuse, but I assume relevant technology has advanced since then. Neither involved a country shooting down a regularly scheduled flight that had just taken off from it’s own territory.
neo made a key point: Iran aimed at our soldiers. I don’t believe they could guarantee no casualties in fact there WERE non American casualties.
We would be in a very different space today if Americans had been hurt. And it argues there’s no guarantee that the situation will ease off. Iran may spas-out again.
I don’t see any significance in the composition of the passenger list. It could have been any plane in the sky that night.
I was in graduate school when the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the shah and the Iranian students were jubilant at first. The hated Shah was gone. About a year later I was talking to one of the Iranian students and he was distraught. He had to return to Iran because his wife and child were there. He had sent his wife and child back to to Iran after the overthrow of the shah and now they couldn’t leave. He said that was the worst mistake he had ever made because Khomeini was worse that the Shah.
It’s probably best if we go with “terrible accident” for public consumption, while privately filing away “wow they’re incompetent” for later.
Some observations on the left and the mullahs in the Iranian revolution here:
https://quillette.com/2020/01/08/irans-fawning-western-apologists/
JimNorCal:
Yes, it could have been any passenger plane in the sky – if the shooting was accidental because the Iranians didn’t realize it was a passenger plane. I believe that’s what occurred.
But if the shooting of a passenger plane was intentional then the plane was probably chosen for a reason. That’s why I mentioned who was on it – if a passenger plane was targeted for some reason (which I strongly believe it was not) then the composition of the passenger list might matter.
The Democrats, and their accomplices, are of course trying to put at least some blame on Trump for creating the climate of “hysteria”. They conveniently ignore that Trump ordered a strike on a proven Iranian terrorist mastermind in Iraq. The U.S. took no action against Iranians on Iranian soil. Seems significant to me.
I was the Combat Information Systems Officer on a carrier during two confusing situations. The first was after the Libyans attacked a U.S.N. patrol aircraft in international air space, and we were conducting operations to demonstrate our right to do so. Late one night a single aircraft departed Tripoli, headed directly toward our position. It had the characteristics of an airliner; but was it? We intercepted it with a fighter, discretely identified it, and that was it. But, the situation was ambiguous for awhile.
The other situation was during the Yom Kippur war when the USN and the Soviet Navy faced off in the eastern Mediterranean. There were over 100 of their ships, and about 60 of ours in a fairly restricted area; and the the USSR surrogate, Egypt, on the fringe. There were many potential threats. In every case cautious restraint prevailed.
Clearly, the Iranians do not practice cautious restraint.
The SJWs entering engineering reminded me of the train disaster in Atlas Shrugged. It’s what happens when ignorant but powerful ideologues run things. Wishes and desires can’t overturn reality. lt’s why the Soviet Union was a third world nation with nuclear weapons. It got them Chernobyl, politics over science. https://www.conservapedia.com/Taggart_Tunnel
Regarding the Iranian missiles not hitting US targets. The simplest explanation is that we disabled or fooled their navigation systems forcing them off target and to destinations where they did no harm when they detonated. Another possibility is that they were shot down by something like Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. It will no doubt come out one of these days.
In March of 2018 a new bridge, only 5 days old, collapsed at Florida International University in Miami.
BEFORE the collapse it was hailed as a great design by a team of newly trained SJW type engineers.
After the collapse the fingers were all pointed at the company that was supposed to have supervised the construction. Not a word about it’s wokeness. Odd isn’t it?
neo, Perhaps Iran decided to blow an airliner out of the sky, and hoped to hit a timing window where they could claim it was due to the US or an accident caused by Iranian confusion during the US attack. But, as it turned out, there was no US attack so only Iran, Dems and US media will blame Trump. It’s an open question. We can all make our guess on this.
BUT, your other point is one that few are talking about. I don’t believe Iran is so accurate that they could launch missiles at US servicemen with confidence that they would miss. They MIGHT have killed Americans. They were willing to go down that road. Trump might well have been compelled to land a crushing blow to Iran. If that eval of Iran’s leaders is correct then … they might be unhinged and uncaring to try again.
All the other blogs I read are saying Iran was just puffing out its chest but missed on purpose. You, neo, have noted the possibility that Iran fired and missed but intended harm. I consider that important to contemplate.
Am I misinterpreting what you wrote?
One of the reasons that Iran has low tech weapons systems is because they’re relatively inexpensive. I did a quick look and, even with their oil wealth, Iran’s GDP is about $446 billion (versus the United States GDP of about $21 trillion.) If Iran were an American state they would rank they would rank 14th, between Maryland ($418 billion) and Michigan ($537 billion). Low tech weapons are much cheaper to buy, build, and maintain.
KRB
Neo,
You make a good point, but I suspect that 1) the details are more complicated than either of us realize (ask Oldflyer) and 2) if the quality of coordination is lacking in any substantial way these things can happen.
I think you were highlighting a deterioration in science and technology in a hyper ideological environment, but I think it more likely that a similar but different deterioration in plain old communication and coordination would cause something like this. Ideology and bad, stressful, and threatening organizational structure matters in coordination. (The old movie The Bedford Incident comes to mind.)
When the USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian airliner, the Vincennes had the flight schedules too (IIRC). But the timing was a bit off, and the stress was high. The Vincennes had the Aegis Combat System with the SPY-1 phased array radar which is supposed to provide lots of capability.
You might suppose that anti-aircraft crews could monitor airliner transponders, but what if enemy fighter/bombers started using phony transponder signals? Combat aircraft fly at all different altitudes including extremely low.
This case is different and worse, but it’s not greatly different. And I don’t think Iran is a highly developed country, as much as say the old Soviet Union.
I heard a news item that claimed that the Russian missile system probably used in this case had a fully automatic mode and presumable would fire without further human action. Obviously it would be immensely stupid to switch that on anywhere near an airport, but …
Here is a list of supposedly all the airliner shootdowns. My quick count is 34. Who knew? I didn’t. Kinda makes you want to avoid flying.
JimNorCal:
Your interpretation of what I wrote is correct.
It is not quite true that “Islamic regimes have not produced top-level scientists”. Look up Maryam Mirzakhani.
Just an aside: Lockheed Martin—CEO Marilyn Hewson—just patented a terrifically exciting small fusion reactor that delivers about 100 megawatts and can fit on a truck, small ship, or large plane. Hope that it works!
Neo suggested that perhaps Iran has a technology expertise problem.
Two observations:
1. Saddam WMDs were not there to be found, but he had gone to a lot of trouble to make everyone think that he did have them, despite official denials. Why would he do that? Simple… because the belief that they existed was a deterrent to his neighbors. Is it possible that Iranian martial prowess and technology is similarly deliberately exaggerated?
2. Authoritarian regimes cannot achieve and maintain the same results as the democracies primarily because their systems emphasize ideological loyalty over technical merit. It is a formula for assuring that the people in charge are the best connected or the best boot lickers.
I stopped at “ethnomathematics”. Insane.
Rouhani’s post-Soleimani/pre #PS752 tweet makes that hard to believe.
“Remember that one time you “accidentally” shot down one of our passenger planes?”
Not a coincidence, no effing way.
Can’t prove itcan’t make them admit it; but this is politics, not law. Trump doesn’t have to prove shit. He’ll do what he wants and make them live with it.Can’t link today
“hard to believe”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/rouhani-tweeted-about-iran-flight-655-before-ukrainian-plane-downed-2020-1
“tweeted”
https://mobile.twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/1214236608196685824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-26061420072004800086.ampproject.net%2F1912180046560%2Fframe.html
“He’ll do what he wants”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW9MlYu31g
Neo
As technical man worked on radar stations, the passenger airplane sure very obvious and different target from any military targets, in the size ( the reflected signal shows big in size of the target) also the speed of the target on the radar screen (slower)
All these and other factors (the altitude …etc) for any operator should be very assay and familiar with these matters to find the information that on the radar screen to pass. Even though the second man in command or the chain of commanders should also should check the target given before look-on and fire the target.
But I read another story why this flight shout down, the story said there are few military commanders on that flight fleeing Iran. I don’t know how much truth in that story.
Also, there is someone say that Mullah regime trying to punish the west by killing their citizens as most of them dual citizens and they regarded as big loose for their second country (i.e. Canad (West))
U.S. knew Iranian missiles were coming ahead of strike
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2842200001
Was the missile attack was a cover to attack civilians? I believe so.
Iran under the mullahs is a little back-stabbing, ankle-biting pipsqueak, a third-world wannabe wishywuz. It can’t fight a conventional war against the hyper-powered, first-world Horseman of the Orange Apocalypse.
Iran *could* have hit a meaty target if they wanted to, but that would have meant No More Mr Nice Guy/Orange Man Bad.
The attack for which they are willing and able to take credit and full responsibility? A spectacular flop; no casualties.
The attack for which they currently have plausible deniability? An inscrutable act; 176 Dead bodies.
Oops. Did we accidentally kill your friends?
These are the only rules they can play by. This is the only way they can stay in the game
Some time back, the IDF ran a strike on, iirc, a Syrian reactor. They were in and out so fast that the local AA didn’t get a shot off. The commander of the Air Defense unit was executed. Not sure if it was because there was no defense due to the IDF’s skill and guts, or because he’d had the guys off to lunch or something.
That night in Teheran was a dicey situation. I presume the local commanders had been told about the missile strike so as to not panic them when stuff showed up on their screens. They, as professionals, would presume a retaliation was likely. And they didn’t want to be executed. Twitchy trigger fingers.
The scenario described by Richard Aubrey above seems to me to be the most plausible explanation.
There is an old saw that says one should never attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity.
bof, on Maryam Mirzakhani: Interesting, thanks. She was unusual on two counts. I should have said that Islamic countries have produced “very few” top-level scientists and mathematicians, and that’s true.
What “evidence” underwrites “missed on purpose”?
Strong incentive to miss: Pres. Trump made quite plain he would initiate (let’s call it) the End Mullah’s Regime In 52 Flavors Program [EMRIFFP].
Technological capability to hit: Recall the recent attack on SaudiAramco crude oil processing plant? Ah, yes. 20 plus precision (mix of) cruise missiles and drone launched rockets, hitting specific elements of the plant at exacting angles to cause maximum damage. The Iranians have demonstrated they can plan and execute a complex attack over a great distance and hit their objectives with timing and explosive effect. Yes, a couple of their cruise missiles failed on the Saudi attack too. But the bulk got home.
Advance warning blabbers: Credit the stories or no, this attack lacked deception. Looks plausible the Iranians warned the Iraqis. No one serious does that when they mean to kill.
Ergo, I conclude it was a show, a Schauspiel. Theater.
Like everything Nancy Pelosi.
Unlikely to be true but perhaps a germ of truth.
h/t commenter at JustOneMinute blog
Betsie Gray
@BetsieGray
@Dmacleod59
and 8 others
Friend in Tehran DM’d me today & asserted that he believed 2 factions within the regime right now are at odds—one wants to fight full on jihad, one wants to back off due to the risk of being nuked like Japan. He believes one shot the plane on purpose as a warning to the other.
Fac1: Let’s all die fiery deaths!
Fac2: NO! Let’s all die really fiery deaths!
Did this make it around TheNewNeo?
Trigger warning: disrespectful to another culture.
As you watch, consider if they are part of Faction-1 or Faction-2
https://youtu.be/zDpdG6hSL7s
“Just an aside: Lockheed Martin—CEO Marilyn Hewson—just patented a terrifically exciting small fusion reactor that delivers about 100 megawatts and can fit on a truck, small ship, or large plane.”
Was she *personally* the inventor, or just announcing the patent for the company?…Hope she wasn’t doing the professor thing and taking personal credit for the “assistant’s” work…
My very existence to be hired ruins diversity, so after 15 years i have no job, and no one is hiring… though they ARE smart enough to insure they do fake interviews wasting time, and making lots of hoops to show they are not violating EEOC..
on another note.. Irans accuracy is not bad..
According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Ashoura represents a major breakthrough in Iranian missile technology. It is the first two-stage MRBM using solid-fueled rocket motors instead of the existing liquid-fueled technology used on the Shahab. This would dramatically reduce the setup and deployment time for the missile and hence, shorten the amount of warning time for the enemy and increase accuracy.
According to Reuters, Iran has produced highly accurate short-range missiles which it hasn’t publicized, quoting Iranian Deputy Defence Minister General Qassem Taqizadeh. The distance between Tehran and the military bases struck on Wednesday is about 1,000 miles [actually shorter]
US technology is for sale, even our secrets..
our own people dont like us, and see helping others as a duty
its spy heaven..
How a ‘quantum change’ in missiles has made Iran a far more dangerous foe
U.S. analysts would describe the attack as a kind of wake-up call: evidence of a vastly improved arsenal of high-precision missiles that Iran has quietly developed and shared with allies over the past decade.
“What we’ve seen in Iran in the past few years is a change from missiles that were mainly political or psychological tools to actual battlefield weapons. This is a quantum change.”
“We have observed consistent improvements in Iranian ballistic missile accuracy,” the official said. Among the more striking and potentially worrisome developments is technology on Iran’s 500-mile Qiam missile that allows controllers to fine-tune its trajectory during flight. Even the Fateh-110, a short-range model provided to Hezbollah and other militant groups, has been refitted with electro-optical and radio-guidance systems so that it can zero in on highly specific targets, the official said.
[snip]
“We’ve been watching this for a while, with both these drones and with missiles and other things that can actually penetrate defensive systems and get in and hit those sensitive targets,” Votel said in an interview with the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
Most disturbing, Votel said, is the “maturation of these systems and how quickly [the Iranians] are learning.”
“When you look at our long learning curve here, theirs is much sharper,” he said. “They’re taking advantage of what we have learned.”
FB on January 10, 2020 at 1:17 am said:
As technical man worked on radar stations,
…
But I read another story why this flight shout down, the story said there are few military commanders on that flight fleeing Iran. I don’t know how much truth in that story.
Also, there is someone say that Mullah regime trying to punish the west by killing their citizens as most of them dual citizens and they regarded as big loose for their second country (i.e. Canad (West))
* * *
FB makes some good points about the technical aspects (and see also OldFlyer and others).
I had a thought earlier today that jibes with his second suggestion, still much debated, which is that the plane was deliberately targeted by Iran with the intent of either blaming Trump, or eliminating someone(s) in particular, or both.
Do we know if any other planes left Tehran’s airport safely during the timeframe in question?
If they did, then the Iranians really are either (a) totally feckless, in the event that the US had responded; (b) totally posturing, knowing that they were not going to kill any Americans and thus believing there would be no retaliation; (c) totally clueless, assuming they could target American soldiers without Trump striking back, whether they killed any or not.
Now, it might be that their regular schedule only had this one plane on it (which was delayed anyway, and thus messes up calculations to some extent; someone in the right circles will know the usual line-up and saturation of departing flights at that day and time). That would be unusual for most airports, but maybe not Tehran, and would leave the accident / incompetence theory untouched.
But if there were other planes going (probably none coming)* there is another interesting question:
(1) Why would a “jittery trigger-happy accident” only involve the one Ukrainian plane?
If no other planes left the airport that night in the danger window, then there is an even more interesting question:
(2) Why was this particular plane the only one cleared to take off?
*(3) technical question: could the anti-aircraft operator distinguish between flights taking off, flights landing, and flights just passing by to drop off a bomb?
Do missiles look like airplanes on their equipment? What about drones?
Targeting fleeing officials is one possibility, but IMO unlikely: the plane was apparently already scheduled before any of the crisis erupted (returning holiday passengers) & a late ticket purchase would arouse suspicions — I suspect the Iranians keep a close watch on at least high-level people, if not everyone, buying passage, and you have to get a visa to leave the country, etc. etc. Maybe no one was watching passenger lists in the confusion, though.
Punishing their own nationals, especially dual-citizens, is well inside their MO, however. That the victims were mostly Canadian rather than American is, I suspect, irrelevant, given the Muslim penchant for killing random people in response to any perceived provocation. Sometimes there is an obvious connection, and sometimes they just seem to be picking a target of opportunity out of any group with any prior history of dissing Islam.
Plus, Canada is next to the US, so practically the same thing, and besides they knew very well that Trudeau would not retaliate.
(cf Mentus: “Did we kill your friends? Oops!”)
The bonus of having US & other Western media and politicians totally rewrite the history may have been anticipated, but I suspect it is looked on as an unexpected expression of Allah’s favor.
Artfldgr: thanks for the info.
You are like having Wikipedia as a PA, anticipating questions where I wouldn’t even know what to ask for.
Most of the passengers were Iranian.
A minority was Canadian w/ Iranian roots. Personally I don’t see benefit to Iran to killing college kids with local roots. Rather, they could become useful in influencing Canada’s policy towards Iran.
I guess anything is possible but so far no theory is strongly persuasive.
Far, far more disturbing to me is the other point. Iran shot missiles. If they had hit Americans, Iran would have received a crushing blow. Dems/media might have erupted much more if that had happened. If Iran was flaky enough to shoot then, what are the odds that they’ve cooled? What are the odds they are waiting with red hot anger for an opportunity?
There is a reason why Islamic regimes have not produced top-level scientists, and why their use of technology is by imitation, rather than by innovation. It’s in the Islamic rejection of “philosophy,” that is, rational examination of the world, which occurred a thousand years ago.
nope.. they get assassinated… whether Iran, Iraq, etc..
Project Babylon
Gerald Bull
Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists
Yahya El Mashad – was an Egyptian nuclear scientist who headed the Iraqi nuclear program. He was killed in a Paris hotel room in June 1980, in an operation generally attributed to the Mossad.
Abdul Rasul was an Iraqi nuclear engineer and a nuclear scientist. He was the central figure in Iraq’s nuclear weapon program and is considered a nuclear weapon technologist. He was the head of Iraq’s nuclear program from 1973 until 1981. He was heavily involved in France-Iraq nuclear cooperation deal. During his visit to France, he was poisoned at a Paris lunch by Mossad and died in 1981.
The Long Tradition of Killing Middle Eastern Nuclear Scientists
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-long-tradition-of-killing-middle-eastern-nuclear-scientists/251338/
(Culture) Shock Treatment- Look what I did to my id
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZkLGZL11rA
(Culture) Shock Treatment – Me of Me – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQywVJeRFVc
Culture shock helps you either reinforce your old values and beliefs or get rid of some of them that no longer make sense to you. Overall, you will become more of a complete individual. Sometimes we have to travel far away to find ourselves, and sometimes changing what’s outside is the only way to change what’s inside.
Honeymoon * Negotiation * Adjustment * Adaptation
However, it is also good to recall the dictum of the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1911), that “all professionals are a conspiracy against the laity” [Founder of the Fabian society (wolves in sheep’s clothing) and social inventor of the gas chamber]
JimNorCal:
I think the odds are good that they’re just waiting for an opportunity.
However, someone firing a missile at this plane doesn’t necessarily mean that, if the person really thought the plane was about to attack Tehran. Then it would have been a defensive move to shoot down the plane, rather than an offensive one.
AesopFan:
If the planes had been shot down by Iranians in order to blame Trump, then they would have blamed him rather than claiming it had technical difficulties and/or engine failure. They did not blame Trump.
It is not quite true that “Islamic regimes have not produced top-level scientists”. Look up Maryam Mirzakhani.
She is, exactly, what a repressive regime will produce. Her work has pretty much no useful ramifications, and therefore no theological pressure would have come her way. The Soviet Union also produced quite a few very good Mathematicians, for the same reasons.
What the Tehrani regime will fail to produce though are really good geologists say (in an active earthquake zone) because that is difficult to do if you are a “young earth” fanatic. It’s not that you can’t learn the material, but how do you publish about pre-Cambrian rocks if you can’t publicly acknowledge the Cambrian age?
What happens is the smartest minds still do science, but they move away from the dangerous zones. Maths is safe, geology is not. Most chemistry is safe, most biology is dangerous. And the safe zones tend to be the ones with the least commercial and useful applications, which leaves the repressive regimes behind commercially.
The Soviets had appalling biological sciences, and their farming suffered considerably, because Stalin considered Mendelian genetics to be un-Socialist. And that continued long,long after Lysenko’s disastrous efforts.
And like the Soviet Union, the field that gets the most money is the aggressive forms of engineering — nuclear, missile, weapons. An ambitious scientist who wants to make his way in such a country, and who doesn’t want to dispute the ruling elite, ends up in them. But the result is ambitious people, not the most genuinely talented.
Not often you can combine two subjects so neatly.
https://www.businessinsider.com/iranians-say-its-impossible-commercial-jet-was-hit-by-missile-2020-1
So: Iranian science IS different from Western science, as it obviously follows these new (actually very old) rules:
“To be jettisoned (says one the book’s authors) are the “criteria of validity, reliability, and objectivity as they are understood and applied in scientific paradigm research.” In their place will come an intense awareness of “social class,” diversity, equality, and all the other standard goals of modern
academia…autocracy.I’m not sure that answers my conundrum above, but it does raise the question of why ANY commercial jets were anywhere near Iraq and Iran given the state of unpredictable hostilities at the time.
However, it does not preclude the answer that the Ukraine flight was deliberately targeted. Iran may have boxed itself in with that statement.
I suspect that Iranian deductive reasoning is not the same as Western deductive reasoning either.
Flight tracking site.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ps752#
Iran has 58 airports. Who knew?
You can see Tehran’s scheduled list of departures for today here, which I presume is not much different from Wednesday’s.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ps752#
Iran fired their missiles Tuesday 5:30 pm EST = Wednesday 2:30 am in Tehran.
There are about 30 flights between midnight and noon listed today (Saturday there), and about 40 yesterday (Friday there) (some have been cancelled, including Lufthansa at 2:25). The site won’t take me back past their Thursday 1:30 pm.
So, what happened with everybody except Ukraine? Did they fly, cancel, delay?
Mac links an interesting article, with a relevant connection.
https://quillette.com/2020/01/08/irans-fawning-western-apologists/
Useful data additions, and thoughtful analysis by J. E. Dyer, although for some reason she dates the airliner downing to 7 February instead of 8 January.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/01/10/an-accidental-shootdown-of-the-ukrainian-airliner-doesnt-really-make-sense-but-ok/
Money quote for this post:
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This is a new wrinkle to me, it may have been in some other reports:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukrainian-airplane-shot-down-by-mistake-by-iranian-anti-aircraft-missile-pentagon-officials-believe
“Eyewitnesses, including the crew of another flight passing above it, described seeing the plane engulfed in flames before crashing at 6:18 a.m., the report said. [by Iran on Thursday]”
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But have the boxes been tampered with, or has Iran thrown in the towel about the missile?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-us-canada-plane-crash-findings
“Ukraine currently has 45 investigators in Iran examining the plane’s debris. Vadym Prystaiko, the country’s foreign minister, said they have been given access to the black boxes and recordings of air-traffic controllers at the Tehran airport.”
Motive! Motive! Motive!
Look for the motive.
Tehran is in northern Iran, and the Ukrainian plane was on a NW flight path, keeping it over Iran for, oh, 150 miles or so.
A large # of the passengers , now deceased, were Iranian expats heading back to an appallingly secular, non-Shia Canada.
What better way to send a message to the increasingly restless Iranians suffering under the yoke of the ayatollahs at home while keeping the evidence under ayatollah control?
Heck, it wasn’t an Iranian plane that was sacrificed. It was a Boeing 737 made in “Death to America” country.
No skin off the Khomenei’s nose, and lessons to all Iranians, including the expats: do not come home again!
neo on January 10, 2020 at 2:40 pm said:
AesopFan:
If the planes had been shot down by Iranians in order to blame Trump, then they would have blamed him rather than claiming it had technical difficulties and/or engine failure. They did not blame Trump.
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Interesting, isn’t it? That makes me tend more to the “sending a message” as in the Smirnoff Principle.
But – a lot of people did blame him.
uir on January 9, 2020 at 6:50
There is a reason why Islamic regimes have not produced top-level scientists, and why their use of technology is by imitation, rather than by innovation. It’s in the Islamic rejection of “philosophy,” that is, rational examination of the world, which occurred a thousand years ago.
You may need to read these:
A Golden Age in Science, Full of Light and Shadow
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/arts/design/10museum.html
Muslim inventions that shaped the modern
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/29/muslim.inventions/index.html
1001inventions
https://www.1001inventions.com/
Facts
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pdf/1001-muslim-inventions-ed-guide.pdf
The Iraqi Abraham Karem