“Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can’t beat the vice president,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign.
“Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe Biden as a threat,” Mr. Bates added. “Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our elections.”
The corruption allegations hinge on Hunter Biden’s work on the Burisma board. The company hired Mr. Biden while his father was vice president and leading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, including a successful push to have Ukraine’s top prosecutor fired for corruption. The effort was backed by European allies.
The story has since been recast by Mr. Trump and some of his staunchest defenders, who say Mr. Biden pushed out the prosecutor because Burisma was under investigation and his son could be implicated. Rudolph W. Giuliani, acting in what he says was his capacity as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, has personally taken up investigating the Bidens and Burisma, and now regularly claims to have uncovered clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing.
The evidence, though, has yet to emerge, and now the Russians appear to have joined the hunt.
Area 1 researchers discovered a G.R.U. phishing campaign on Ukrainian companies on New Year’s Eve. A week later, Area 1 determined what the Ukrainian targets had in common: They were all subsidiaries of Burisma Holdings, the company at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Among the Burisma subsidiaries phished were KUB-Gas, Aldea, Esko-Pivnich, Nadragas, Tehnocom-Service and Pari. The targets also included Kvartal 95, a Ukrainian television production company founded by Mr. Zelensky. The phishing attack on Kvartal 95 appears to have been aimed at digging up email correspondence for the company’s chief, Ivan Bakanov, whom Mr. Zelensky appointed as the head of Ukraine’s Security Service last June.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html
Attorney General William Barr announced an update in the investigation of the deadly shooting last month at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla. He said Monday: “This was an act of terrorism.”
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Attorney General William Barr announced an update in the investigation of the deadly shooting last month at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla. He said Monday: “This was an act of terrorism.”
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Updated at 5:35 p.m. ET
Attorney General William Barr announced Monday that 21 Saudi military cadets studying at U.S. military bases are being sent back to their home country after investigators found child pornography, “jihadi or anti-American content” on accounts or devices associated with the students.
The announcement comes a month after a Saudi national opened fire in a classroom at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., killing three young sailors and wounding eight others.
“This was an act of terrorism,” Barr said, adding that the shooter was “motivated by jihadist ideology.”
Federal authorities said Monday that investigators have not identified any co-conspirators in the attack. The gunman does not appear to have acted on behalf of any terrorist organization.
“Social media attributed to the shooter suggests that he harbored anti-U.S. military and anti-Israel sentiments,” said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, “and that he thought violence was necessary to defend Muslim countries.”
The incident renewed scrutiny of foreign military exchange programs. Some 850 Saudi trainees currently study alongside U.S. military personnel under such programs, but federal officials halted all Saudis training in the U.S. in the wake of the shooting.
Of the 21 Saudis now in the process of being removed from the U.S., investigators found that 17 had shared social media posts that were either jihadi or anti-American in nature, Barr said.
About 15 individuals had “some kind of contact” with child pornography, Barr noted.
“While one of these individuals had a significant number of such images, all the rest had one or two images, in most cases posted in a chat room by some other person or received over social media,” Barr said.
The move by the U.S. was made in consultation with the Saudi government. Barr said federal prosecutors did not find that any of the material unearthed or actions by the 21 Saudi trainees rose to the level of criminal charges in the United States.
“However, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia determined that this material demonstrated conduct unbecoming an officer in the Royal Saudi Air Force and in the Royal Navy. And the 21 cadets have been disenrolled from their training curriculum from the U.S. military and will be returning to Saudi Arabia later today,” Barr said Monday.
Federal officials say the Saudi government has fully cooperated with the investigation.
About 28,000 Saudis have gone through military training in the U.S. over several decades, according to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, which issued a statement on Monday portraying the Pensacola gunman as an isolated actor.
“The disturbed and radicalized individual who carried out this terrible attack acted alone,” according to the statement. “He does not represent the hundreds of thousands of Saudis who have lived, studied and trained in the United States over the past several decades, nor does his heinous act represent the values of Saudi Arabia.”
In addition, the embassy stated that the country’s authorities are committed to working alongside U.S. officials in combating global terrorism.
“The kingdom has worked closely with the US to counter this global threat,” said the embassy’s statement.
On Sunday, NPR reported that more than 20 Saudi nationals would be expelled from the U.S. military exchange program after investigators uncovered the links to the extremist and pornographic content.
Prior to the shooting in Pensacola, Barr said, the gunman made statements critical of U.S. military actions overseas. Weeks before the rampage, the shooter visited a memorial to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City and posted to his social media that “the countdown has begun,” Barr said.
Witnesses said that during the Dec. 6 shooting, which lasted about 15 minutes, the assailant fired at photographs of President Trump and former U.S. presidents. The gunman was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy.
Investigators recovered a semiautomatic handgun with an extended magazine from the scene. The weapon, Barr said, had been legally purchased.
Barr also said federal authorities are struggling to gain access to digital evidence on two Apple phones used by the gunman, despite having court orders to be able to review the phones.
“It is very important for us to know with whom and about what the shooter was communicating before he died,” Barr said. “We have asked Apple for their help in unlocking the shooter’s phones. So far, Apple has not given any substantive assistance.”
Apple has said it would not assist the Justice Department by turning over private information from the gunman’s phones on messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795952989/doj-says-21-saudi-trainees-being-expelled-from-u-s-over-jihadist-child-porn
An anchor for Iran’s state-run TV resigned today because of “lies” surrounding Iranian airstrikes that downed a Boeing 737-800 passenger plane above Tehran last week.
“Iran State TV’s anchor resigns saying, ‘It was very hard for me to believe the killing of my countrymen. I apologize for lying to you on TV for 13 years,'” it was reported.
Journalists in Iran have struggled to report factually on the events surrounding the recent airstrikes due to the government’s strong grasp on media outlets. President Trump demanded the Iranians “turn your internet back on” yesterday after the Iranian government moved to shut off communications to the outside world.
Iran initially refused to take responsibility for the crash and said they would not allow the United States or Boeing to investigate the contents of the flight’s black box recorder.
Days later, after a video was released showing a missile striking the Ukrainian airliner, the Iranian government claimed a missile “unintentionally” hit the plane, instantly killing all 176 passengers on board. More than 80 Iranians died as a result of the plane crash.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that “preliminary conclusions of internal investigation by Armed Forces: Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster.”
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-iranian-reporter-apologizes-for-lying-and-quits-government-tv-after-plane-crash
Updated 6:56 PM ET, Mon January 13, 2020
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Al-Asad air base, Iraq (CNN)Akeem Ferguson was in a bunker when his team received the bone-chilling radio transmission: Six Iranian ballistic missiles were headed in their direction.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/middleeast/iran-strike-al-asad-base-iraq-exclusive-intl/index.html
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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/rudy-giuliani-donald-trump-impeachment/index.html
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago if Iran’s increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to five current and former senior administration officials.
The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said.
That decision explains why assassinating Soleimani was on the menu of options that the military presented to Trump two weeks ago for responding to an attack by Iranian proxies in Iraq, in which a U.S. contractor was killed and four U.S. service members were wounded, the officials said.
The timing, however, could undermine the Trump administration’s stated justification for ordering the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3. Officials have said Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, was planning imminent attacks on Americans and had to be stopped.
“There have been a number of options presented to the president over the course of time,” a senior administration official said, adding that it was “some time ago” that the president’s aides put assassinating Soleimani on the list of potential responses to Iranian aggression.
After Iran shot down a U.S. drone in June, John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser at the time, urged Trump to retaliate by signing off on an operation to kill Soleimani, officials said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also wanted Trump to authorize the assassination, officials said.
But Trump rejected the idea, saying he’d take that step only if Iran crossed his red line: killing an American. The president’s message was “that’s only on the table if they hit Americans,” according to a person briefed on the discussion.
Neither the White House nor the National Security Council responded to requests for comment. Bolton and the State Department also did not respond to requests for comment.
U.S. intelligence officials have closely tracked Soleimani’s movements for years. When Trump came into office, Pompeo, who was Trump’s first CIA director, urged the president to consider taking a more aggressive approach to Soleimani after showing him new intelligence on what a second senior administration official described as “very serious threats that didn’t come to fruition.”
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The idea of killing Soleimani came up in discussions in 2017 that Trump’s national security adviser at the time, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, was having with other administration officials about the president’s broader national security strategy, officials said. But it was just one of a host of possible elements of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and “was not something that was thought of as a first move,” said a former senior administration official involved in the discussions.
The idea did become more serious after McMaster was replaced in April 2018 by Bolton, a longtime Iran hawk and advocate for regime change in Tehran. Bolton left the White House in September — he said he resigned, while Trump said he fired him — following policy disagreements on Iran and other issues.
The administration of President George W. Bush designated the Quds Force a foreign terrorist organization in 2007. Four years later, the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Soleimani and three other senior Quds Force officials in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
But in April, Bolton helped prod Trump to designate the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. White House officials at the time refused to say whether that meant the United States would target Revolutionary Guard leaders as it does the leadership of other terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State militant group and al Qaeda.
Iran retaliated by designating the U.S. military a terrorist organization.
The actions underscored the rising tension between the United States and Iran in the three years since Trump took office.
Get full coverage of the Iran crisis
Since Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 — and his administration tightened its squeeze on Iran’s economy with punishing economic sanctions — Iran has attacked U.S. military assets in Iraq with increasing aggressiveness and frequency.
Iran has launched more than a dozen separate rocket attacks on bases housing Americans since October. The U.S. military blamed Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia that is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces but is backed by Iran. U.S. military and intelligence officials say the group takes direction from Iran, specifically the Quds Force.
A U.S. military official in Iraq said the rockets Iran has launched at U.S. forces have become more sophisticated over time.
Most attacks in October and November used 107mm rockets, which have a shorter range and less explosive power. But an attack on Ain al Asad air base in Anbar Province on Dec. 3 included 122mm rockets, with more firepower and the ability to be fired from a greater distance. They are generally launched from more sophisticated improvised rail systems, leading the U.S. military to believe the attackers were receiving new equipment and training from Iran.
The largest attack was on Dec. 27, when Kataib Hezbollah launched more than 30 rockets at an Iraqi base in Kirkuk, killing a U.S. contractor and wounding four U.S. service members.
The base, known as K-1 Air Base, belongs to the Iraqi military but frequently hosts forces that are part of the U.S.-led coalition assigned to Operation Inherent Resolve, the fight against ISIS. On Dec. 27, the coalition was preparing for a counter-ISIS operation, so more Americans were on the base than usual.
After the attack, the United States launched airstrikes against five Kataib Hezbollah locations, three in Iraq and two in Syria, targeting ammunition and weapon supplies, as well as command and control sites.
Trump signed off on the operation to kill Soleimani after Iranian-backed militia members responded to the U.S. strikes by storming the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper presented a series of response options to the president two weeks ago, including killing Soleimani. Esper presented the pros and cons of such an operation but made it clear that he was in favor of taking out Soleimani, officials said.
At a meeting later, military leaders laid out the estimated number of casualties associated with each option, showing the president that killing Soleimani at Imam Khomeini International Airport late at night would involve fewer possible casualties than the other options.
The strike marked a break from past administrations, which have never publicly claimed responsibility for killing senior figures from the Iranian regime or its proxies.
During the height of the U.S. war in Iraq in 2006, for example, when Iranian-armed and -trained militias were planting lethal roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops, Bush administration officials debated how to confront Soleimani and his operatives in Iraq, according to four former U.S. officials. U.S. troops captured Revolutionary Guard operatives but never tried to kill Soleimani or launch attacks inside Iranian territory, former officials said.
At one point, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, raised the possibility of designating Soleimani and his Quds Force officers as enemy combatants in Iraq, according to Eric Edelman, a former diplomat who held senior posts at the Defense Department and the White House. But in the end, the idea was ruled out as U.S. commanders and officials did not want to open up a new front in Iraq when U.S. forces were preoccupied with the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, Edelman said.
“There were a lot of us who thought he should be taken out. But at the end of the day, they decided not to do that,” Edelman said. There was concern about “the danger of escalation and the danger of having a conflict with Iran while we already had our hands full in Iraq,” he said.
Iran responded to the assassination of Soleimani by striking bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq, and after no Americans were killed, Trump appeared to back off further military conflict. Instead, he announced new sanctions against Iran on Friday.
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-authorized-soleimani-s-killing-7-months-ago-conditions-n1113271
Attorney General William Barr told reporters in a press conference Monday that, “so far, Apple has not given any substantive assistance” to the FBI in its investigation into a deadly shooting at Pensacola, Florida, Naval Air Station.
The FBI sent a letter to Apple on January 8 asking for its help unlocking two iPhones used by the shooter. On Monday, Barr said that Apple has refused that request.
“When the FBI requested information from us relating to this case a month ago, we gave them all of the data in our possession and we will continue to support them with the data we have available,” an Apple spokesperson said last week.
This is not the first time Apple and the FBI have butt heads on the issue.
In 2015, Apple refused a similar request from the agency to unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino case, on the grounds that doing so would require Apple to give the FBI tools to counter the company’s encryption, creating a “backdoor” that could be used to access other devices. The FBI ended up suing Apple for defying the court order, though it ultimately dropped the case after finding a private company to help it unlock the phone.
Agency officials have repeatedly criticized tech companies’ use of encryption, saying that it prevents law enforcement from following leads and obtaining evidence that could aid in an investigation.
“This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence once it has obtained a court order based on probable cause,” Barr said during the press conference Monday.
Civil rights and privacy advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have praised Apple’s defense of encryption, arguing that allowing law enforcement access to devices could pose risks for activists, journalists, and persecuted minorities in countries with oppressive regimes.
“There is simply no way for Apple, or any other company, to provide the FBI access to encrypted communications without also providing it to authoritarian foreign governments and weakening our defenses against criminals and hackers,” the ACLU said in an emailed statement to Business Insider.
Monday’s press conference confirmed that, for now, Apple is doubling down what it sees as its commitment to user privacy by refusing to assist the FBI in its investigation.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Like four years ago, the government’s demand would weaken the security of millions of iPhones, and is dangerous and unconstitutional. Strong encryption enables religious minorities facing genocide, like the Uyghurs in China, and journalists investigating powerful drug cartels in Mexico, to communicate safely with each other, knowledgeable sources, and the outside world. There is simply no way for Apple, or any other company, to provide the FBI access to encrypted communications without also providing it to authoritarian foreign governments and weakening our defenses against criminals and hackers.”
Source Article from https://www.insider.com/apple-iphone-fbi-shooting-pensacola-barr-2020-1
AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq—More than two hours before Iran fired its first salvo of missiles at the large base here in western Iraq last week, American soldiers took cover in concrete bunkers that once belonged to Saddam Hussein’s military.
Air Force Capt. Nate Brown, a 34-year-old from Alabama, said he had sent his wife a message telling her he loved her before seeking shelter in one of the bunkers, where there were no phone or radio connections. Some soldiers said they played the card game Uno and even dozed off as they waited…
Source Article from https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-could-feel-the-shock-wave-how-u-s-troops-withstood-attack-on-iraq-base-11578942544
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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-meeting/index.html
P.J. Quaid, a corn options broker at the CME Group in Chicago, said he’s eager to learn how the White House plans to enforce the tenets of the phase one deal if Beijing skirts its obligations.
“This thing’s been a crazy roller coaster since it started. A lot of people have become pessimistic because a lot of the purchases they said they’re going to make seem hard to attain,” Quaid said.
“If this thing comes in under expectations, you could see sell-off,” he added. “It’s been a rough time for people trading Ags.” The Office of the United States Trade Representative did not return CNBC’s request for comment.
Others were cautious after a Chinese media report suggested that Beijing isn’t as upbeat on the prospect for future trade talks. Taoran Notes, a blog run by a state-owned newspaper called Economic Daily, published its first blog post in two months on Sunday.
“We need to bear in mind that the trade war is not over yet. The U.S. hasn’t removed all the tariffs on Chinese imports and China is still imposing its retaliatory duties,” the blog wrote according to a CNBC translation. “There are still so many uncertainties ahead.”
For Don Roose, president of Des Moines, Iowa-based brokerage U.S. Commodities, China’s commitments to farm purchases are key.
“We’re anticipating $35 billion [of farm purchases] the first year and $40 billion in the second,” he said. “It doesn’t look like we’re creating any new world demand.” But unresolved, Roose said, is whether the Chinese will — after years of haggling — actually end up buying more U.S. farm goods than before President Donald Trump opened the trade spat nearly two years ago.
Still, Roose said he was slightly more optimistic with a phase one deal nearly signed.
“There’s always a question mark, but if they want to get to ‘phase two,’ they’re going to have to show some solid follow-through,” he said.
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/13/heres-whats-in-the-phase-one-china-trade-deal-trump-is-signing-this-week.html
Iranian demonstrators, angry that their government accidentally shot down a passenger plane, took to the streets for a third day on Monday. Videos from these protests appear to show security forces using live ammunition against demonstrators, something that Iran’s government has denied.
All 176 people on the Ukraine-bound flight last Wednesday were killed. Iran initially said the Boeing 737-800 crashed because of a mechanical failure but and later said it downed the plane unintentionally. The majority of those who died were Iranians.
Demonstrations over the “unforgivable mistake” started over the weekend. Security forces have been “dispersing anti-regime protests quickly and harshly with tear gas and rubber bullets,” NPR’s Peter Kenyon reported.
They also reportedly used live ammunition against the protesters. Videos released by a human rights group and verified by The Associated Press show bloodied demonstrators being carried away from the scene. “Oh my God, she’s bleeding nonstop!” one person in the video shouts, according to the wire service. Other videos show chaotic scenes of demonstrators fleeing security forces.
“Police treated people who had gathered with patience and tolerance,” Tehran police Chief Hossein Rahimi told local media, according to the AP. “Police did not shoot in the gatherings since broad-mindedness and restraint has been the agenda of the police forces of the capital.”
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have ratcheted up dramatically since the U.S. killed a top Iranian military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in an airstrike in Baghdad earlier this month. President Trump has accused Soleimani of planning imminent attacks on U.S. citizens, without providing specific details or evidence.
After Soleimani’s killing, vast crowds of mourners — many of them openly weeping — packed the streets in Tehran to pay their respects. Iranian leaders promised to avenge the killing and launched airstrikes against Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. Those strikes caused no casualties.
Iran’s military eventually said on Saturday that the plane was shot down near Tehran “as a hostile object due to human error at a time of heightened US threats of war,” according to Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency. The Iranians also placed a large amount of the blame on the U.S., saying its air defense units were particularly sensitive because of increased U.S. military flights in the area.
“Demonstrations that had been attacking the U.S. for killing Iran’s top general quickly turned into calls of ‘death to the dictator,’ a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” Kenyon reported.
The protests, which are largely driven by university students, emerged in many cities across the country, Kenyon notes.
In a tweet on Sunday, Trump called for Iran’s leaders to exercise restraint. “DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS,” the president wrote. “Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching.”
That same day, the U.K.’s ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, was briefly arrested near a demonstration in Tehran. Local media accuse him of “organizing and provoking people.”
Macaire said he wasn’t taking part in a protest. He said the event was advertised as a vigil for plane victims and that he was detained for half an hour after leaving the area. U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab decried the arrest as a “flagrant violation of international law.”
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795940176/iran-denies-that-its-forces-shot-at-anti-government-protesters
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has come under fire on social media, accused of downplaying anti-regime protests in Iran which have erupted in response to the downing of a commercial jet carrying 176 people last week.
Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 was shot down by the Iranian military soon after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini international airport. Iranian anti-aircraft troops destroyed the plane after incorrectly identifying it as an enemy military aircraft.
The regime in Tehran initially claimed the plane went down due to technical failure, but foreign intelligence reports eventually forced Iran to admit its troops were to blame. Dozens of Iranians were on board, and angry citizens have taken to the streets to vent their fury and demand justice. Some are even calling for the downfall of the regime.
Pelosi discussed the incident with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on This Week on Sunday. Stephanopoulos asked if she supported the anti-regime protesters and whether it would be a good thing if the regime did indeed fall.
“The protesters are protesting—as I understand it, this brand of protesters—about the fact that that plane went down,” Pelosi said. “And many students were on that plane and these are largely students in the street.”
Security forces have fired tear gas at crowds of protesters in an effort to subdue marchers. There are also reports that security forces have clashed with demonstrators and possibly even fired live ammunition.
Last year, the regime grappled with anti-government protesters sparked by the rising costs of fuel and other goods.
Security forces are believed to have killed some 1,500 people in suppressing the unrest, according to Iranian interior ministry officials who provided details to Reuters. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also claimed the Iranian regime had killed 1,500 protesters during a January 10 press briefing.
The regime is accused of throttling internet connections across the country to block news or evidence of the killings from getting out to the international community.
“The fact is this: there were protesters in the streets before against the regime,” Pelosi said. “After the taking out of [military commander Qassem] Soleimani, there were protesters in the street joined together—as you know—against us, that wasn’t good.”
After the U.S. assassinated Soleimani, hundreds of thousands of people choked the streets of major Iraqi and Iranian cities as his funeral procession passed through. The Associated Press reported that more than 1 million people turned out in Tehran. Such was the scale of mourning in Soleimani’s home city of Kerman that a stampede occurred, killing dozens.
The hashtag #NancyPelosiFakeNews was trending on Monday morning, used by more than 20,000 Twitter accounts. Many tweets accused Pelosi of defending the regime, though she actually criticized Iranian authorities over the plane being shot down. Others took issue with Pelosi’s characterization of the current protests as student-dominated.
Students were certainly active over the weekend, gathering at universities in Tehran to denounce the regime. Young people shouted chants including, “They are lying that our enemy is America! Our enemy is right here!” according to CNBC.
Reuters reported that students were also filmed on Monday chanting slogans such as “Clerics get lost!” outside universities in Tehran and the central city of Isfahan.
Flight 752 was shot down soon after Iran launched missile strikes against Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. troops. Iranian anti-aircraft sites were on high alert in case of American retaliation when troops misidentified the commercial airliner as a threat.
Pelosi told Stephanopoulos that the shoot down is “a terrible, terrible tragedy and they should be held accountable for letting commercial flights go at a time that was so dangerous.”
“But there are different reasons why people are in the street,” she added. “Of course we would love to see the aspirations of the people of Iran realized with a better situation there. But escalating the situation—unless we’ve exhausted every other remedy.”
“There are a lot of bad actors who are doing bad things and threatening bad things to us, we know that, Iran being one of them. But how do we deal with that in a way that calms, rather than escalates?”
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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/nancy-pelosi-fake-news-trends-speaker-iran-protests-regime-largely-students-1481833
We first learned that it was a missile that took down a Ukrainian airliner over Iran because of this video showing the moment of impact. All 176 people on board were killed. To find out what happened to Flight 752 after it left Tehran airport on Jan. 8, we collected flight data, analyzed witness videos and images of the crash site, to paint the clearest picture yet of that disastrous seven-minute flight. We’ll walk you through the evidence, minute by minute, from the plane’s takeoff to the moment it crashed. It’s the early hours of Wednesday, Jan. 8. Iran has just launched ballistic missiles at U.S. military targets in Iraq in retaliation for an American drone strike that killed Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani. Iranian defenses are on high alert, on guard for a possible U.S. attack. Four hours later, at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, Flight 752 operated by Ukraine International Airlines is getting ready for departure. At 6:12 a.m., the plane takes off. It follows its regular route, flies northwest and climbs to almost 8,000 feet in around three minutes, according to flight tracker data. Until now, the plane’s transponder has been signaling normally. But just before 6:15 a.m., it stops. We don’t yet know why. But we do know the plane keeps flying. And within 30 seconds, a missile hits it. A video filmed here captures the moment. Let’s watch it again and slow it down. Here’s the missile, and here’s the plane. Where did the missile come from? Just a few miles away are military sites equipped with Iranian defense systems. A nearby security camera films a missile being launched from one of those sites shortly after 6:15 a.m. The missile hits the plane seconds later. An Iranian military commander said a defense system operator mistook the passenger jet for a cruise missile. The missile sets the plane on fire. But the jet continues flying for several minutes. We don’t know its precise path after 6:15 a.m. But we do know that it turns back in the direction of the airport, engulfed by flames. Around 6:19 a.m., a bystander films the plane slowly going down. There appears to be a second explosion before the jetliner plummets outside Tehran about 10 miles from where the last signal was sent. Footage from a security camera shows the scene as the plane crashes toward it. Here we see the immediate aftermath of the crash. As day breaks, another witness films the smoldering wreckage. Debris is spread out over 1,500 feet along a small park, orchards and a soccer field, narrowly missing a nearby village. A large section of the plane looks badly charred. More jet parts are found here. And the plane’s tail and wheels land over 500 feet away. It is a gruesome scene. The passengers’ personal items — toys, clothes, photo albums — are scattered around. After days of denials, Iran took responsibility for the crash, blaming human error at a moment of heightened tensions.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/world/middleeast/iran-plane-crash-missile.html
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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-meeting/index.html
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago if Iran’s increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to five current and former senior administration officials.
The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said.
That decision explains why assassinating Soleimani was on the menu of options that the military presented to Trump two weeks ago for responding to an attack by Iranian proxies in Iraq, in which a U.S. contractor was killed and four U.S. service members were wounded, the officials said.
The timing, however, could undermine the Trump administration’s stated justification for ordering the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3. Officials have said Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, was planning imminent attacks on Americans and had to be stopped.
“There have been a number of options presented to the president over the course of time,” a senior administration official said, adding that it was “some time ago” that the president’s aides put assassinating Soleimani on the list of potential responses to Iranian aggression.
After Iran shot down a U.S. drone in June, John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser at the time, urged Trump to retaliate by signing off on an operation to kill Soleimani, officials said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also wanted Trump to authorize the assassination, officials said.
But Trump rejected the idea, saying he’d take that step only if Iran crossed his red line: killing an American. The president’s message was “that’s only on the table if they hit Americans,” according to a person briefed on the discussion.
Neither the White House nor the National Security Council responded to requests for comment. Bolton and the State Department also did not respond to requests for comment.
U.S. intelligence officials have closely tracked Soleimani’s movements for years. When Trump came into office, Pompeo, who was Trump’s first CIA director, urged the president to consider taking a more aggressive approach to Soleimani after showing him new intelligence on what a second senior administration official described as “very serious threats that didn’t come to fruition.”
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The idea of killing Soleimani came up in discussions in 2017 that Trump’s national security adviser at the time, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, was having with other administration officials about the president’s broader national security strategy, officials said. But it was just one of a host of possible elements of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and “was not something that was thought of as a first move,” said a former senior administration official involved in the discussions.
The idea did become more serious after McMaster was replaced in April 2018 by Bolton, a longtime Iran hawk and advocate for regime change in Tehran. Bolton left the White House in September — he said he resigned, while Trump said he fired him — following policy disagreements on Iran and other issues.
The administration of President George W. Bush designated the Quds Force a foreign terrorist organization in 2007. Four years later, the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Soleimani and three other senior Quds Force officials in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
But in April, Bolton helped prod Trump to designate the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. White House officials at the time refused to say whether that meant the United States would target Revolutionary Guard leaders as it does the leadership of other terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State militant group and al Qaeda.
Iran retaliated by designating the U.S. military a terrorist organization.
The actions underscored the rising tension between the United States and Iran in the three years since Trump took office.
Get full coverage of the Iran crisis
Since Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 — and his administration tightened its squeeze on Iran’s economy with punishing economic sanctions — Iran has attacked U.S. military assets in Iraq with increasing aggressiveness and frequency.
Iran has launched more than a dozen separate rocket attacks on bases housing Americans since October. The U.S. military blamed Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia that is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces but is backed by Iran. U.S. military and intelligence officials say the group takes direction from Iran, specifically the Quds Force.
A U.S. military official in Iraq said the rockets Iran has launched at U.S. forces have become more sophisticated over time.
Most attacks in October and November used 107mm rockets, which have a shorter range and less explosive power. But an attack on Ain al Asad air base in Anbar Province on Dec. 3 included 122mm rockets, with more firepower and the ability to be fired from a greater distance. They are generally launched from more sophisticated improvised rail systems, leading the U.S. military to believe the attackers were receiving new equipment and training from Iran.
The largest attack was on Dec. 27, when Kataib Hezbollah launched more than 30 rockets at an Iraqi base in Kirkuk, killing a U.S. contractor and wounding four U.S. service members.
The base, known as K-1 Air Base, belongs to the Iraqi military but frequently hosts forces that are part of the U.S.-led coalition assigned to Operation Inherent Resolve, the fight against ISIS. On Dec. 27, the coalition was preparing for a counter-ISIS operation, so more Americans were on the base than usual.
After the attack, the United States launched airstrikes against five Kataib Hezbollah locations, three in Iraq and two in Syria, targeting ammunition and weapon supplies, as well as command and control sites.
Trump signed off on the operation to kill Soleimani after Iranian-backed militia members responded to the U.S. strikes by storming the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper presented a series of response options to the president two weeks ago, including killing Soleimani. Esper presented the pros and cons of such an operation but made it clear that he was in favor of taking out Soleimani, officials said.
At a meeting later, military leaders laid out the estimated number of casualties associated with each option, showing the president that killing Soleimani at Imam Khomeini International Airport late at night would involve fewer possible casualties than the other options.
The strike marked a break from past administrations, which have never publicly claimed responsibility for killing senior figures from the Iranian regime or its proxies.
During the height of the U.S. war in Iraq in 2006, for example, when Iranian-armed and -trained militias were planting lethal roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops, Bush administration officials debated how to confront Soleimani and his operatives in Iraq, according to four former U.S. officials. U.S. troops captured Revolutionary Guard operatives but never tried to kill Soleimani or launch attacks inside Iranian territory, former officials said.
At one point, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, raised the possibility of designating Soleimani and his Quds Force officers as enemy combatants in Iraq, according to Eric Edelman, a former diplomat who held senior posts at the Defense Department and the White House. But in the end, the idea was ruled out as U.S. commanders and officials did not want to open up a new front in Iraq when U.S. forces were preoccupied with the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, Edelman said.
“There were a lot of us who thought he should be taken out. But at the end of the day, they decided not to do that,” Edelman said. There was concern about “the danger of escalation and the danger of having a conflict with Iran while we already had our hands full in Iraq,” he said.
Iran responded to the assassination of Soleimani by striking bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq, and after no Americans were killed, Trump appeared to back off further military conflict. Instead, he announced new sanctions against Iran on Friday.
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-authorized-soleimani-s-killing-7-months-ago-conditions-n1113271
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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/cory-booker-ends-presidential-race/index.html
Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, a victim of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, says the applicant screening process at military bases needs to be scrubbed and replaced with a more stringent policy.
More than a decade after the Fort Hood shooting, foreigners are still being allowed onto U.S. military bases without proper vetting, retired Army Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”
Lunsford, who was wounded in 2009 in Texas by former Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, reacted to reports that more than a dozen Saudi service members undergoing training at U.S. military facilities are expected to be expelled from the U.S. following an investigation into last month’s deadly shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida.
“We spoke about it then, that we needed to have a stronger vetting process with service members that are training with our forces here on our soil. … Nothing has changed,” he said, stressing that the gunman in Florida was able to legally purchase a weapon.
“That needs to change,” he added.
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None of the Saudis targeted for expulsion is accused of aiding the Saudi second lieutenant whom authorities say killed three U.S. sailors and injured eight other people in the Dec. 6 rampage, CNN reported. But some of them were found to have ties to extremist groups and others are accused of possessing child pornography, the report said.
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The Justice Department is also expected to conclude that the Pensacola attack was an act of terrorism, CNN reported. The FBI has been investigating the case as possible terrorism since discovering writings by the gunman, who was killed by sheriff’s deputies, The Washington Post reported.
Following the attack, about a dozen Saudi trainees were confined to their quarters in Pensacola as the FBI investigated the shooting as a possible terror attack and the Pentagon launched a review of some 850 Saudis undergoing training throughout the U.S., the report said.
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Lunsford said law-abiding Americans have to “jump through hoops” to purchase a weapon or obtain a concealed-carry permit, yet the Pensacola gunman was able to buy one to carry out his attack on U.S. sailors. He said not all foreign trainees from “friendly nations” are supportive of the U.S. military.
“We need to today, sit down and look at the policy that we’re using to screen these trainees. We need to scrub that and start over from scratch and make it more stringent and more structured so we do not have this happen again,” said Lunsford, adding that in his case, the military “passed the buck” despite numerous red flags about Nidal Hasan’s support for terrorists.
Fox News’ Dom Calicchio contributed to this report.
Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/fort-hood-survivor-pensacola-attack-saudi-trainees-extremism
“Right before the first wave began, it was quiet, but then over the radio we heard a crackle and ‘incoming, incoming’,” said First Lt. Charles Duncan, 25, standing amid the charred and twisted remnants of another soldier’s living space. “In those seconds, we just waited.”
DUBAI (Reuters) – Protesters took to the streets of Iran for a third day on Monday, expressing outrage over the authorities’ admission that they had shot down a passenger plane by accident during a confrontation with the United States.
Video from inside Iran showed riot police and protesters back out on the streets on Monday after two days of violent anti-government demonstrations. Images of the earlier protests showed slogans chanted against the supreme leader, with pools of blood on the streets and gunfire in the air.
Authorities denied that police had opened fire, while U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: “don’t kill your protesters.”
Demonstrations at home against Iran’s rulers are the latest twist in one of the most destabilizing escalations between the United States and Iran since the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Tehran has acknowledged shooting down the Ukrainian jetliner by mistake on Wednesday, killing 176 people, hours after it had fired at U.S. bases to retaliate for the killing of Iran’s most powerful military commander in a drone strike ordered by Trump.
Iranian public anger, rumbling for days as Iran repeatedly denied it was to blame for the plane crash, erupted into protests on Saturday when the military admitted its role.
Videos posted late on Sunday recorded gunshots in the vicinity of protests in Tehran’s Azadi Square. Wounded were being carried and security personnel could be seen running with rifles. Other posts showed riot police hitting protesters with batons as people nearby shouted “Don’t beat them!”
“Death to the dictator,” footage circulating on social media showed protesters shouting, directing their fury at Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the system of clerical rule.
“They killed our elites and replaced them with clerics,” demonstrators chanted at a protest outside a university on Monday, an apparent reference to Iranian students returning to studies in Canada who were among those killed on the flight.
Reuters could not independently authenticate the footage. State-affiliated media reported the protests on Saturday and Sunday in Tehran and other cities, without giving such details.
“At protests, police absolutely did not shoot because the capital’s police officers have been given orders to show restraint,” Hossein Rahimi, head of the Tehran police, said in a statement carried by the state broadcaster’s website.
Iran’s latest showdown with the United States has come at a precarious time for the authorities in Tehran and their allies across the Middle East, when sanctions imposed by Trump have caused deep harm to the Iranian economy.
Iranian authorities killed hundreds of protesters in November in what appears to have been the bloodiest crackdown on anti-government unrest since the 1979 revolution. In Iraq and Lebanon, governments that have the support of Iran-backed armed groups have also faced months of hostile mass demonstrations.
Trump wrote on Twitter late on Sunday that National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien had “suggested today that sanctions & protests have Iran ‘choked off’, will force them to negotiate.”
“Actually, I couldn’t care less if they negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and ‘don’t kill your protesters’,” he wrote, repeating his earlier tweets making similar calls to the Iranian authorities not to open fire.
Iran’s government spokesman dismissed Trump’s comments, saying Iranians were suffering because of his actions and they would remember that he had ordered the killing in a drone strike of Qassem Soleimani, the general whose death on Jan. 3 prompted huge mourning ceremonies in Iran over several days.
Trump precipitated the escalation with Iran in 2018 by pulling out of a deal between Tehran and world powers under which sanctions were eased in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program. He has said the goal is to force Iran to agree to a more stringent pact.
Iran has repeatedly said it will not negotiate as long as U.S. sanctions are in place. It denies seeking nuclear arms.
The recent flare-up began in December when rockets fired at U.S. bases in Iraq killed a U.S. contractor. Washington blamed pro-Iran militia and launched air strikes that killed at least 25 fighters. The militia surrounded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad for two days, and Trump later ordered the strike on Soleimani, who had built up Iran’s regional network of allied militia.
Iran retaliated on Wednesday by firing missiles at Iraqi bases where U.S. troops were stationed, but did not kill any Americans. The Ukrainian plane, on its way to Kiev, crashed hours later. Most of those killed were Iranians or Iranian dual nationals. Scores were Canadians, most believed to be dual nationals who had traveled to Iran to visit relatives there.
After days of denying responsibility, commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards issued profuse apologies. Iran’s president called it a “disastrous mistake”. A top commander said he had told the authorities on the day of the crash it had been shot down, raising questions about why Iran had initially denied it.
Canada held vigils. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told one event: “We will not rest until there are answers.”
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said it had obtained visas for two of its investigators to travel to Iran.
Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh and Parisa Hafezil; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Peter Graff
Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-crash/iran-denies-shooting-at-protesters-amid-fury-over-downing-of-plane-idUSKBN1ZC0P1
WASHINGTON — It’s a duty John Roberts undoubtedly doesn’t want but cannot avoid.
The Constitution requires that when a president is put on trial for impeachment, “the Chief Justice shall preside.” Roberts will be the third to assume that responsibility after Salmon P. Chase presided over the Senate trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and William Rehnquist oversaw the trial of Bill Clinton in 1999.
It won’t take Roberts more than a few minutes to get to the U.S. Capitol, directly across the street from the Supreme Court, leaving the court that he seeks to run in a nonpartisan manner and entering the highly charged political atmosphere of the Senate. But the televised image of him seated in the presiding officer’s chair will be a misleading one: He’ll actually have little control over what goes on.
Roberts’ role will be more master of ceremonies than trial judge.
“He has no ultimate authority over much of anything,” said Frank Bowman, an expert on impeachment at the University of Missouri School of Law.
Longstanding Senate rules say Roberts, as the presiding officer, may rule on key issues about evidence, including “questions of relevancy, materiality, and redundancy.” But whatever he concludes can immediately be overturned by a simple majority vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has stressed that Roberts is unlikely to issue any substantive decisions on his own. “I would anticipate the chief justice would not actually make any rulings,” McConnell said. “He would simply submit a motion to the body and we would vote.”
For that reason, senators are not merely trial jurors who decide the facts. They also decide legal issues, such as what evidence can be admitted, which is typically the job of a trial judge.
Roberts will have some responsibilities. He will call the Senate to order and decide when to adjourn. And he will read aloud any written questions submitted by senators, who will not be allowed to speak while the trial is underway. But he will defer repeatedly to the Senate parliamentarian on what the rules require.
Bowman said the House prosecutors may try to push Roberts to rule on the admissibility of evidence. “If he’s forced to decide, I think he would make an honest effort to apply normal rules of judicial relevance,” Bowman said. “But I imagine he’ll try to avoid being put in that situation.”
In addition, Roberts might be able to cast tie-breaking votes — a role that’s typically played by the vice president, who can act as the presiding officer during regular Senate proceedings. The rules do not explicitly give the chief justice that authority, but Chase broke two ties when he presided over Johnson’s impeachment trial, so there is some precedent.
Roberts’ job will likely be more complicated than the one Rehnquist faced. Before Clinton’s trial began, the Senate’s majority and minority leaders — Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi and Democrat Tom Daschle of South Dakota — worked out the rules together, sticking closely to those adopted for Johnson’s trial. No such spirit of bipartisanship has guided preparation for President Donald Trump’s trial.
Republican and Democratic leaders have been at an impasse over calling witnesses. Many Republican senators have said they would prefer a quick trial, and McConnell has said he has enough votes to proceed without first calling witnesses — a process that he says would be akin to what happened in Clinton’s trial.
Democrats, however, are demanding testimony from key Trump administration witnesses who have refused to testify — a situation that differs from the Clinton proceedings. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is pushing for testimony about Trump’s Ukraine dealings from former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Mulvaney’s senior adviser and a top White House budget office official.
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The disagreement prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, preventing it from beginning a trial. But pressure has been building from within her own party as well as from Republicans to transmit the articles, and Pelosi said Friday that she could submit them as soon as this week after consulting with her caucus on Tuesday.
For many Americans, the impeachment trial will provide their first look at Roberts, who tends to avoid the limelight and is seldom seen in action, except at presidential inaugurations, when he administers the oath of office. Roberts, who turns 65 on Jan. 27, was nominated to be chief justice in 2005 by President George W. Bush to succeed Rehnquist, for whom he once served as a law clerk.
Roberts famously told senators at his confirmation hearing that as a justice, he’d strive to be a neutral umpire. “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, not to pitch or bat,” he said.
He became the youngest chief justice in more than 200 years and soon upset many conservatives by writing the decision that saved President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. But after Obama criticized a Supreme Court decision during a State of the Union speech as the justices sat nearby, Roberts wondered why they even bothered to attend.
“To the extent the State of the Union has generated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there,” he said.
Roberts clashed with Trump, too, after the president tweeted criticism of what he called an Obama judge. In a rare public response, Roberts said: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
The chief justice will strive to display the same sense of independence in presiding over Trump’s impeachment trial, but the limits of his role will provide few opportunities to do so.
In reflecting on his own turn as chief justice during an impeachment proceeding, Rehnquist paraphrased a line from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera “Iolanthe”: “I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.”
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/how-chief-justice-john-roberts-would-preside-over-politically-charged-n1111491
We first learned that it was a missile that took down a Ukrainian airliner over Iran because of this video showing the moment of impact. All 176 people on board were killed. To find out what happened to Flight 752 after it left Tehran airport on Jan. 8, we collected flight data, analyzed witness videos and images of the crash site, to paint the clearest picture yet of that disastrous seven-minute flight. We’ll walk you through the evidence, minute by minute, from the plane’s takeoff to the moment it crashed. It’s the early hours of Wednesday, Jan. 8. Iran has just launched ballistic missiles at U.S. military targets in Iraq in retaliation for an American drone strike that killed Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani. Iranian defenses are on high alert, on guard for a possible U.S. attack. Four hours later, at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, Flight 752 operated by Ukraine International Airlines is getting ready for departure. At 6:12 a.m., the plane takes off. It follows its regular route, flies northwest and climbs to almost 8,000 feet in around three minutes, according to flight tracker data. Until now, the plane’s transponder has been signaling normally. But just before 6:15 a.m., it stops. We don’t yet know why. But we do know the plane keeps flying. And within 30 seconds, a missile hits it. A video filmed here captures the moment. Let’s watch it again and slow it down. Here’s the missile, and here’s the plane. Where did the missile come from? Just a few miles away are military sites equipped with Iranian defense systems. A nearby security camera films a missile being launched from one of those sites shortly after 6:15 a.m. The missile hits the plane seconds later. An Iranian military commander said a defense system operator mistook the passenger jet for a cruise missile. The missile sets the plane on fire. But the jet continues flying for several minutes. We don’t know its precise path after 6:15 a.m. But we do know that it turns back in the direction of the airport, engulfed by flames. Around 6:19 a.m., a bystander films the plane slowly going down. There appears to be a second explosion before the jetliner plummets outside Tehran about 10 miles from where the last signal was sent. Footage from a security camera shows the scene as the plane crashes toward it. Here we see the immediate aftermath of the crash. As day breaks, another witness films the smoldering wreckage. Debris is spread out over 1,500 feet along a small park, orchards and a soccer field, narrowly missing a nearby village. A large section of the plane looks badly charred. More jet parts are found here. And the plane’s tail and wheels land over 500 feet away. It is a gruesome scene. The passengers’ personal items — toys, clothes, photo albums — are scattered around. After days of denials, Iran took responsibility for the crash, blaming human error at a moment of heightened tensions.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-plane-protests.html