Def: SNAFU: Acronym, military, ca.1941: a confused or chaotic state; a mess (more on the definition later). In the early hours of 8 Jan 2020 the Iranian IRCG lobbed 22 missiles into two military bases in Iraq – the al-Assad Air Base, which is the main American air base in the north of Iraq, and the American base in Iraqi Kurdistan at Erbil, in their Operation Martyr Soleimani. There were no reported casualties, but there was heavy damage to the bases. In the aftermath of the attack, some 4+ hours later, the Iranians shot down Ukraine Airlines flight 752, killing all 176 passengers and crew, a domestic flight, which had departed Tehran at 6:12 am. Most of the people on the plane were Iranian or of Iranian descent. It has been called human error, but was it really? We will examine that in this instalment as well as the wider picture for Iran.
Here is the information we have on the flight thus far:
Flight 752 was scheduled to take off at 05:15 local time (UTC+3:30), but was delayed. It departed Stand 116 and took off from Runway 29R at 06:12:47 local time and was expected to land in Kiev at 08:00 local time (UTC+2:00). The final ADS-B data received was at 06:14:45, less than two minutes after departure. Between 06:14:20 and 06:14:45 the airplane turned right 24° (from the take-off heading of 289° to 313°), according to flight data.
According to the data, the last recorded altitude was at 2,416 metres (7,925 ft) above mean sea level with a ground speed of 275 knots (509 km/h). The airport is 1,007 metres (3,305 ft) above mean sea level, which gives an altitude of 1,410 metres (4,620 ft) above ground level. The flight was climbing at just under 3000 ft/min when the flight data record abruptly ended over open ground near the northern end of Enqelab Eslami Boulevard in Parand, after the airplane was hit by a short-range missile launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The aircraft crashed into terrain located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi; 8.1 nmi) north-west of the airport.
The report from flightradar.com shows that the flight data recorder (black box) abruptly stopped recording at the end of the flight path indicated. With this data in mind, we have the chart for the crash below (bigger), and then we will parse what happened, along with some unanswered questions:
The first thing that immediately jumps out from the chart is the Ceres/Saturn/Pluto conjunction in the 1st house (the target group), square the Meridian axis. This powerful conjunction shows the mass loss of life, the grief that came of it and a turning point for the IRGC. More on that latter point later. The Saturn/Pluto conjunction has been proven in cases of violence and mass murder (Ebertin). That particular reading in relation to the Meridian axis, though, is “The desire to rise from difficult circumstances through the application of tenacity and endurance, severity, one-sided-ness, self-sacrifice. – An ascetic person, a magician or adept. – Separation. (Flight).” Flight, in this case, refers to running from a situation.
However, the chart at first glance does not show malevolence. Instead, it shows debility and frayed nerves, as indicated by the 45° modulus midpoints. There is one in particular that stands out: Asc=Mar/Ura – “An excitable person with the inclination to commit acts of violence. – An upsetting event, accident, physical injury, (arrest).” This ‘excitable person’ would be the unfortunate soldier manning the missile battery that took down the plane. How do we know he was ‘unfortunate’? And was he, really?
In a statement issued on camera by the IRGC Aerospace Commander regarding the incident, he had the following to report:
“I wish I was dead and such an incident hadn’t happened. We in IRGC accept all the responsibility, and are ready to implement any decision made by the Establishment. I was in the country’s west following attacks on US base in Iraq when I heard the news. We sacrificed our lives for our people for a lifetime, and now we’re trading our reputation with God (disgracing ourselves) and appear in front of the camera to explain. We had requested the establishment of a no-fly zone given the war situation. But it was not approved for certain considerations. Air Defence operator sent a message to his commanders; but after he didn’t receive any response for 10 seconds, he decided to shoot it down.
[Video of IRGC Aerospace Cmdr. showing the place on map where the Ukrainian plane was shot down by the air defence.] I informed Iranian officials on Wednesday morning, and said we speculate our own passenger plane has been shot down. But the General Staff of Armed Forces quarantined all those who knew about it, and decided to declare it later. The officials, including Aviation authorities, who kept denying the missile hit, are not guilty. They made those remarks based on what they knew. We are to blame for everything. We were at that time ready for an all-out war with US. We had reports of cruise missiles fired at Iran. It was an individual’s error that caused this tragedy.”
Emphases added. One doesn’t often hear admissions like that from military forces, or from governments – like, almost never. But, there is another way to view this, not taking away from the tragedy – was the soldier manning the battery simply doing his job in extraordinary circumstances? Military people would say yes. In fact, a German retired military officer described it more or less in detail, going on to say:
Under these circumstances – highest possible alarm level, current warnings of hostile cruise missiles, unknown target flying towards a presumably military objective, lack of communication, little decision time – the operator of the Tor system did what he was trained to do.
As a former military officer I cannot see any fault in what the man did…Iran’s strategic intent is to withstand U.S. pressure and to show defiance. Closing the airspace would have contradicted that objective. The shooting down of flight PS752 happened during a tactical engagement by a small mobile unit which did what it was supposed to do. Communication fuck-ups happen all the time during war like situations. They often cause casualties but are unavoidable. The general in his press conference claimed that his organization is guilty:
The plane was also on its track, it made no mistake. It did the right thing, as did the Aviation Organization. Everyone did the right thing. Only one of our forces made a mistake. Since he is under our command, we are responsible for that. We must be accountable.
It is the right thing to say public relation wise. But the incident itself is not a military error or mistake.
As stated and as hard as this might sound to some readers, there was no mistake, militarily. But there was more to the story, and this is where holes and questions begin to appear in the narratives being put forward. We can expect details to emerge regarding the questions to follow in the coming weeks and months. What is there to question, then? Iran has admitted fault. The beginnings of the answer to that are also in the chart of the incident, starting with the midpoint, Asc=Mer/Nep: “The tendency to open oneself to the influences coming from other people, the state of being exploited, deceived or harmed by others.”
There is a theory floating around that the missile battery under question was being subjected to electronic warfare at the time, with the signal from the plane being corrupted to look like an incoming missile. This is purely speculation at the moment, but there is something fishy about the shoot-down. (See also here.)
There was a video by an anonymous videographer (sound familiar, as in ‘anonymous sources’?) that purportedly recorded the exact moment the missile hit the plane, then promptly uploaded the video to one Nariman Gharib, who then dutifully shunted the video on to the New York Times. The Times ran the story the very next day, with no real investigation or verification, calling the video, “a smoking gun”:
The anonymous videographer is the person who caught the 19-second clip which shows a missile striking Flight PS752 shortly after take-off from Tehran’s Imam Khomenei airport at around 6.15 am. This person, who remains silent during the filming while smoking a cigarette (the smoke briefly wafts over the screen), is standing in the suburb of Parand looking northwest. His location was verified by the NY Times using satellite data. The rapid way the newspaper’s technical resources were marshaled raises a curious question about how a seemingly random video submission was afforded such punctilious attention.
But the big question which many people on social media are asking is: why was this “videographer” standing in a derelict industrial area outside Tehran at around six o’clock in the morning with a mobile phone camera training on a fixed angle to the darkened sky? The airliner is barely visible, yet the sky-watching person has the camera pointed and ready to film a most dramatic event, seconds before it happened. That strongly suggests, foreknowledge.
Given that something awful has just been witnessed it is all the more strange that the person holding the camera remains calm and unshaken. There is no audible expression of shock or even the slightest disquiet.
Turns out that Nariman Gharib, the guy who received the video and credited by the NY Times for submitting it, is a vociferous anti-Iranian government dissident who does not live in Iran. He ardently promotes regime change in his social media posts.
… the NY Times’ video expert, who collaborated closely with Gharib to get the story out within hours of the incident, previously worked as a senior investigator at Bellingcat.
Bellingcat is a notorious propaganda outfit, a media adjunct to Western intelligence services. It was they who provided the dubious intelligence that falsely fingered the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass in the takedown of MH17 over the Ukraine. As to the electronic warfare, the linked article goes on to describe the type of EW weapon that may have been deployed at the time, a MALD decoy. Given the aforementioned midpoint, such a scenario would be entirely possible given the circumstances.
The missile battery that fired the fatal strike, which was quickly added at the outset of the Operation Martyr Soleimani was an old Russian Tor system, which was operating independently at the time. It was not integrated with the rest of the Iranian air defenses, and was thus open to jamming and deceptive input. That would also mean weaknesses in communications, which is also indicated in the chart: Asc=Sun/Nep: “Difficult advancement in life, a negatively inclined environment. – An association with weak or sick persons.” Add to this the previous midpoint and the weakness of communications is pretty clear. But there is yet another more insidious explanation for what might have happened, which would fit more in line with the 45° modulus midpoints.
Then, there is one more explanation: The plane was shot down deliberately to exert additional pressure on Iran from the United States during the alleged acute phase of the crisis between Iran and the United States, which had a chance to develop into an open regional war. In the framework of this version, it could be suspected that the operator may have been recruited by US intelligence or blackmailed, [re: weak or sick persons, above] or the system was captured in an act of sabotage by the US or its affiliated forces.
Regardless the existing gaps in the current official version of the events and the real course of the developments, Iran will and further be forced to claim that the airliner shoot down was a “human error”. Iran can ill-afford to admit the lack of control over key objects of military infrastructure in the heart of the country.
Such a scenario would put the incident in the light of a mass murder, rather than a simple error in judgement. If we put on our tinfoil hats (or use our common sense), this latter explanation would appear to make more sense, along with the anonymous videographer, Gharib and Bellingcat associations. Where does this leave Iran, then? After the admission of the ‘error’ by the IRGC, protests were reported in several cities in Iran. Iran’s chart with transits is below (bigger);
One would expect a spontaneous outpouring of grief and anger over such a tragedy, and there was. But there were also suspicious parts to the protests as well. The first protests were by university students, but soon after others joined in and there was reported violence. The UK ambassador was there ands was arrested a short time after, then released. The Iranian government had cautioned the police and security forces to show restraint.
Then, we started to see behind the veil a bit. The slogans they were using were contrived. Both Trump and Pompeo were tweeting about how much they cared about the Iranian people, how they stood behind them (while they had been sanctioning them and killing their soldiers in Syria and Iraq). Neither man could care less about the Iranians. The protests, as in Hong Kong and many other places, had the hallmarks of foreign operatives spurring on the students.
If we take a look at the chart with transits, above, we see indicators that would support foreign influence. The Moon rules Iran’s 12th house (secret enemies of the state, meaning a ‘5th column’ in Iran, a covert influence), and when the protests started the Saturn/Pluto square had been in effect for some time, but transiting Ceres had moved to within less than a degree of a sesquisquare with Iran’s Moon, which also rules the populace in general terms. Then, on the day, the Sun transited to a square with Iran’s Pluto, mobilizing the masses to protest.
There is no doubt that there is a minority in Iran who are unhappy with their government. That is true of every nation we can probably imagine, though. Is it enough to lead to regime change? Past precedence says no, but the Washington establishment is ever-hopeful. We do see the possibility of a leadership spill later this year, when Uranus makes its first contact with the Iranian MC. That would be more likely. But it may also lead to a more hard-line leadership. We saw such a thing in Australia when Uranus squared the Aussie MC and there was a leadership spill in the Liberal Party.
But readers who might be hoping for regime change in Iran are going to be disappointed. The protests we see now are nowhere near what they were with the earlier ones regarding the fuel price increases, though Western propaganda seeks to magnify them out of proportion. Tweets by Trump and Pompeo fall on deaf ears in Iran, as Twitter accounts for only just over 3% of social media usage in Iran. It has been reported Trump’s tweets voicing support for Iranians garnered over 200,000 likes, a record for a tweet in Farsi (Trump does not speak Farsi). That would be around 2 ½ % of the total population of Iran, but the tweets would probably be seen mostly by expat Iranian followers of Trump. Consider the source that cites the record for Trump’ tweet.
If we take a wider view and look at the main directions to Iran’s chart, there is nothing that would suggest an overthrow of the government. The chart with the main directions is below (bigger):
Iran’s current directions include Mar/Ura=Plu: “Force, violent interventions, Higher Power”. This is to the Iranian Pluto, and it shows the assassination of Soleimani, who was delivering a communication to the acting Iraqi PM at the time. It also shows the heightened tensions between them and the US, and the downing of flight 752. Pluto is in Iran’s 3rd house (communications and commerce). It shows as well the heavy sanctions that are undermining the Iranian economy, and which are now likely to increase due to the European members’ joint statement on the JCPOA, denouncing Iran for violating the terms of the agreement. The Iranians are actually in compliance. The E3 statement is full of lies and can be seen as the E3 kowtowing to pressures from Washington at a time when the EU is facing considerable pressures itself.
In just over a year we see the direction by 45° modulus of Sat/Ura to the Iranian Sun: “Physical exposure to severe tests of strength, the power of resistance, rebellion, inflexibility. – Separation.” If there is going to be any sort of an uprising in Iran, it will not be until 2021, if at all. That direction to the Sun can represent the leadership, but the Sun also rules the Iranian Ascendant, which reflects the mood of the populace. It has often been stated in many sources that if there is to be a war with Iran it would come after the 2020 US elections. If so, what we are looking at with that direction is the ‘power of resistance’ and ‘severe tests of strength’.
In a wider view, the assassination of Soleimani has opened a new window, or world view, for Iran. That is shown by the directed Vertex to the Iranian MC. There is an article worth reading about what is emerging in the Middle East, which is about a new Middle East, made in Iran.
At the same time, there is the direction Jup/Nep to Uranus: “Experiencing the contrast between imagination and reality, the stage of coming down to earth with a bump, sudden recognition of a difficult situation.” We could probably say with confidence that the shoot-down of flight 752 was just such an event, and that they have some difficult situations to address, whether it is a weakness in their systems, a saboteur, or covert cells operating in the country.
Then finally, we have the direction of Uranus by 45° modulus in just over a year, affecting the horizon axis, which could indicate changes to their constitution, or even a complete change of outlook. That could mean many things. A lot can happen in a year. 2021 looks to be a very active and changeable year in Iran. There are slated to be elections that year and there could well be an upset. There are parliamentary elections there next month. However, even though anything is possible, the likelihood of regime change in Iran looks to be off the table in the immediate future, as in the next few years.
There are a few things in this year alone that have raised Iran’s status with its amicable neighbors – the assassination of Soleimani, the missile strikes on the US bases in Iraq, and their apology over the downing of the plane. There is a final question, then: If the shoot-down of flight 752 was not a ‘mistake’, or if it was a heinous act of nefarious intent, why apologize? Answer: They did so to de-escalate tensions with the world at large. They also did it to avoid what would have become a major media coup for the West. It was a wise decision, and strategic as well. And if they did shoot down the plane due to an error, they showed moral courage in apologizing, which is more than we can say for the likes of TWA flight 800, MH17, Iran Air flight 655 and others as well, and not to mention the thousands of unintentional and otherwise civilian lives lost in US drone strikes.
We end here with the words that make up the acronym, SNAFU – Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. Reportedly, it was the US Marines who first started using the acronym to describe their situation in WWII. In today’s terms, it describes what we have had in the Middle East, really, since the end of WWII, especially regarding Iran. There is a video that explains more or less in detail how we got to this place.
Washington’s actions, and those of the West in general in the region, are not about combating terrorism. It is about control of the oil, and in a larger context, about keeping Russia and China down, as in non-competitors in any way. For their part, the Iranians are standing up, and have sent clear messages to the West, through the media and through their actions. The only way the West can hope to bring Iran back into the status of ‘a normal country’, as in compliant to Washington’s wishes, is through covert actions, and that is what we are seeing now.
Trump has stated he is a ‘very stable genius’. Actually, he is quite malleable. But if he is as he says, his special genius seems to be his ability to greatly accelerate the demise of Western interests in the Middle and Far East and in Central Asia. Then, there is Europe as well. And he has gathered the right people around him to do just that.
That aside, the money we have spent on adventurism in the Middle East needs to come home. If Trump and his team bring us to that, then more power to them, but picking a fight with Iran is the worst way of doing so. And if it is eventually proven that there was a covert operation to bring down that plane, then the blame for the incident probably falls squarely on the shoulders of the people in the White House, and the Israelis. For now, the families of the victims mourn their lost loved ones.
UPDATE: Arrests have been made in Iran in connection with the incident, suggesting suspicion of wrongdoing/criminal activity. The authorities are now investigating if there was electronic interference with the radar systems, causing the operator to mistake the plane for a missile or a 9/11 type of plane attack, as well as the possibility of enemy infiltrators.
Featured pic from The Iran Primer