Shamkhani highlighted Iran’s willingness to fully cooperate with the parties involved in the incident and said, “There has been close collaboration with Iran and Ukraine since the beginning of the accident and the Ukrainian experts were the first group who arrived in Iran and were provided with necessary access to start their technical and field investigation without any restrictions.”
Emphasizing on preventing any misunderstanding and interference of other parties in the technical process of the investigation, Shamkhani noted, “This bitter incident was due to human error and we must not allow it to turn into a political controversy with the interference of biased elements.”
Secretary of Supreme National Security Council invited his Ukrainian counterpart to visit Tehran for the joint investigation regarding the incident by the national security agencies of the two countries and noted, “Achieving a mutual technical assessment can yield the final result on this case in a professional and non-political environment.”
A Ukrainian plane with 176 people on board was unintentionally downed near the capital city of Tehran on January 8 by IRGC Aerospace amid the heightened tensions between Iran and the US in the past weeks. The victims include mostly Iranians and Iranian-Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, and four British nationals.
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