US activist says Trump ‘bears some blame’ for Ukraine plane crash outside Tehran
An American political activist says US President Donald Trump “bears some blame” for this week’s crash of a Ukrainian plane outside Tehran, which took place after Trump massively escalated tensions in the region by ordering the assassination of Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.
Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of Code Pink, a women-led anti-war group, said on Twitter the crash was a “tragic collateral damage."
“Iranian military says it was at its highest level of alert amid the heightened tensions with the US and in the confusion, they accidentally shot down the plane,” Benjamin tweeted on Saturday.
“Trump bears some blame, don’t you think? Tragic collateral damage from his murder of Soleimani,” she added.
Iranian military says it was at its highest level of alert amid the heightened tensions with the US and in the confusion, they accidentally shot down the plane. Trump bears some blame, don’t you think? Tragic collateral damage from his murder of Soleimani. #NoWarWithIran
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) January 11, 2020
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which was operating a Boeing 737-800, went down near Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board.
Iran says the aircraft, which was headed to Kiev, had flown close to a sensitive military site and been brought down due to human error "at a time of crisis caused by US adventurism."
In a statement issued on Saturday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran said that at the time of the incident, the forces had been on the highest alert.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered Iran's "profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations."
"A sad day. Preliminary conclusions of internal investigation by Armed Forces: Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster," he tweeted.
The US military carried out an airstrike on the direction of Trump at Baghdad’s international airport last Friday, assassinating Gen. Soleimani and the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, as well as eight other companions.
On Wednesday, Iran responded to the assassination, striking the American airbase of Ain al-Assad in Anbar province in western Iraq and another in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called the assassination “provocative and disproportionate,” and other members of Congress said they were unconvinced after a closed-door intelligence briefing provided by administration officials.
“President Trump recklessly assassinated Qassem Soleimani,” said US Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state. “He had no evidence of an imminent threat or attack,” she said.
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