Secret intelligence & ‘highly likelys’: How media created narrative around Tehran jet crash to blame Iran, Russia and Trump

The Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) Boeing 737 took off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran on Wednesday morning. It was bound for Kiev, amid rising tensions over the Iranian missile strikes against US targets inside Iraq. The nine crew members and 167 passengers on board, including 15 children, may have complained that the flight was running almost an hour late. Within seven minutes, they would all be dead.

The text of the article totally contradicts the headline and contains nothing about western intelligence agencies claiming there was a technical malfunction. What is going on with Reuters' coverage? https://t.co/VsrJBsAKXb pic.twitter.com/3Vi0AAV0TG

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) January 10, 2020

Initial reports spoke of “technical problems” as the cause. By Thursday morning, however, the narrative was shifting: US officials were “confident that Iran shot down a Ukrainian jetliner,” CBS reported citing anonymous sources.

AP qualified the speculation as “highly likely,” a weasel phrase made notorious by the official UK narrative of the 2018 Salisbury “novichok poisonings.”

This could have been anything: A malfunction, an accident, an intentional downing (the US has done it to an Iranian airliner before!)

What I do know is that after all the lies intelligence officials have told us about the Middle East, it’s idiotic to take them at their word. https://t.co/X1n6fLrH1E

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) January 9, 2020

By the time the New York Times got to it, though, the qualifications have disappeared: “An Iranian missile accidentally brought down a Ukrainian jetliner over Iran this week, killing everyone aboard, American and allied officials said on Thursday…”

Then it was Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s turn. He told reporters that “intelligence from multiple sources… indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.” 

It was textbook “citogenesis” at work, the manufacturing of a narrative through circular reporting and reliance on published assertions as proof.

Yet just the day before, Reuters had been reporting something completely different, citing an anonymous “Canadian security source.”

“The initial assessment of Western intelligence agencies is that the plane was not brought down by a missile. There is no evidence to suggest that,” said the source, adding that a “technical malfunction” was the likely culprit. Iranian civil aviation authorities likewise said that no missile debris was found at the crash site, and that rumors of a missile were “illogical” and “scientifically impossible.”

Instead of being skeptical of anonymously sourced claims by intelligence agencies – which have a stellar record of being wrong on major issues, from the Douma “chemical attack” and Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to the whole sordid ‘Russiagate’ mess – mainstream media outlets in the West happily ran with the “Iran shoots down airliner” angle. Some went even farther, adding that a “Russian missile” was involved.

Notable how some US/UK media correspondents are making a point of referencing that the Iranian missile was “Russian-made.” It’s not important to the story (no more than Israeli weapons are often US made, for instance). But it helps associate the tragedy with Russia, in some way pic.twitter.com/M58rPnDtAc

— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) January 9, 2020

Soon enough, the “verification” wizards at Bellingcat were involved in parsing “open source evidence” of course. Photos and videos of missile parts and alleged strikes quickly made rounds online, amplified by mainstream outlets, to cement the Narrative that was already becoming weaponized.

Yesterday, Reuters/NYT reported Western intelligence agencies said the Ukrainian airliner in Iran was NOT brought down by missile

They admitted "there is no evidence" for this conspiracy

Now they're saying the opposite. Don't believe their war propagandahttps://t.co/tPAess05Ln

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 9, 2020

Even as they took the claim about an Iranian missile at face value, Democrats were quick to blame Trump for the deaths on board Flight 752, and explain how the passengers and crew were somehow caught in a “crossfire” – though the crash happened hundreds of miles away and hours after the Iranian missile strikes.

.@RepSpeier blames Trump for Iran shooting down a passenger jet: “This is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the president of the United States." pic.twitter.com/DBeGdIozxW

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 9, 2020

Republicans, on the other hand, used the Narrative as proof that the “regime in Tehran” was monstrous, justifying Trump’s decision to launch a drone assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani last week. Gone was their skepticism towards intelligence agencies that had been caught red-handed abusing procedures to spy on the Trump campaign and cook up ‘Russiagate.’

At this point, with the media narrative established, and policy decisions based on it no doubt to follow, it won’t matter what the actual investigation on the ground finds. The truth about the Iraqi WMDs or Douma “chemical attack” didn’t bring back the deaths the lies about them had caused. It won’t bring back those 176 unfortunate souls who perished horribly at dawn on Wednesday – only to find themselves posthumously conscripted as fighters in a propaganda war.