TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a phone conversation on Saturday evening on the unintentional downing of a Ukrainian passenger plan near Tehran on Wednesday morning.

Rouhani said Iran welcomes international assistance in the probe into the downing of the Ukrainian plane with 176 people aboard including 63 Canadians. 

“Iran welcomes any international cooperation within the framework of international law to precisely shed light on this incident, and will provide all consular facilities to that end, and we are ready for the continuation of talks between the foreign ministers of Iran and Canada in this regard,” Rouhani told Trudeau.

“So far fruitful investigations have been conducted to find the reasons for this incident, and rapid, careful and complementary examinations are also underway until reaching the final result,” Rouhani explained.

The United States is considered the chief culprit in the repeated tragic incidents that happen one after another. The latest one was the tragic downing of the Ukrainian jetliner. U.S. President Donald Trump’s erratic and hot-headed behavior first started by abrogating the 2015 nuclear deal, imposing the harshest ever sanctions in history against Iran to the assassination of top Iranian military Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3. 

“We all must make efforts to return full stability and security to the region,” Rouhani tells Trudeau.To respond to the U.S. act of war, on January 8 Iran fired missiles at a U.S. military base in Iraq from which U.S. drones had been flown to kill the Iranian general. Since the armed forces had been put on the highest level of alert during the missile attack, the air defense base near Tehran had mistaken the Ukrainian plane for a cruise missile by the enemy. 

In his talks with the Canadian prime minister, Rouhani said the security situation in the delicate Middle East region has reached a “dangerous” point because of the U.S. behavior and suggested that “we all must make efforts to return full stability and security to the region.”

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander the IRGC aerospace unit, told a press conference on Saturday that the operator of the air defense base near Tehran had mistaken the jetliner with a cruise missile. 

Iran has taken full responsibility for the mistake and apologized to all families and the countries that have been affected by this tragedy.

“Our profound regrets, apologies, and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations,” Zarif tweeted on Saturday.
Zarif added, “Human error at time of crisis caused by U.S. adventurism led to disaster.” 
MJ/PA