Iranian officials said a “misaligned radar” was the reason two Iranian missiles shot down a civilian Ukrainian passenger plane, killing 176 passengers and crew, during heightened tensions with the United States in January, according to the Washington Post.
The Boeing 737-800 was shot down within minutes of leaving Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran during a particularly precarious time when Iran was anticipating an American attack in retaliation for an Iranian attack on the US embassy in Baghdad.
The Iranians attacked the US embassy because of an American missile strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.
The Post reports that “'[a] failure occurred due to a human error in following the procedure’ for aligning the radar, causing a ‘107-degree error’ in the system, the authority reported.”