Sanctions Cause Iran's High Rate Of Air Force Accidents - Veteran Pilot
A veteran Iranian fighter jet pilot says sanctions on the country are the main reason for the high number of military aviation accidents and casualties among air force pilots.
A veteran Iranian fighter jet pilot says sanctions on the country are the main reason for the high number of military aviation accidents and casualties among air force pilots.
Brigadier General Kioumars Heidarian, a retired pilot who underwent training in the US state of Texas and flew fighter jets for Iran’s air force both before and after the 1979 revolution, told ISNA on Saturday that if Iran could procure better aircraft equipment, it could reduce the number the accidents.
“Accidents happen everywhere, and no one in the world has managed to decrease the number of accidents to zero, but if the equipment is complete, it is natural that the number of accidents will be fewer,” he said.
The veteran pilot added that the situation would have been much better if new fighters replaced the current dilapidated fleet, noting that “parts are made both domestically and imported from countries such as Russia and China, but the main problem is international sanctions against our country.”
Last week, an F-7 fighter jet of the Iranian Air Force crashed near the central city of Esfahan, killing both of the aircraft’s pilots, and in February, two other pilots were killed when an Iranian F-5 fighter jet crashed into a soccer stadium in the northwest city of Tabriz.
In June 2021, two Air Force pilots were killed at Dezful air base in the southern province of Khuzestan due to the sudden glitch in their ejection seats while preparing the plane before the flight.
In a commentary entitled "Double Standards," the Iranian Diplomacy website, asked whether the new rhetoric by Amir-Abdollahian about obstacles to the revival of the Iran nuclear deal, was tailored solely for listeners in the annual meeting in Davos or it was the outcome of his experiences as foreign minister during the past 9 months.
Amir-Abdollahian, during a conversation with journalist Farid Zakaria in the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on May 26, said that hardliners in both Iran and the United States were working against the revival of the JCPOA. He particularly pointed out opposition by hardliners in the Iranian parliament (Majles).
According to Iran diplomacy, Amir-Abdollahian's statement about the Iranian parliament exerting pressure on the government to reject the JCPOA "could mean that the Iranian foreign Minister has two different views about the same issue." The website asked why he did not say the same thing to Iranian media.
However, neither Amir-Abdollahian nor Zakaria mentioned that hardliners are in control of Iran's negotiating team. Chief negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani is known for his opposition to the JCPOA since the time he served in the team under ultraconservative negotiator Saeed Jalili in early 2010s. He continued to oppose an agreement with the United States until his appointment as chief negotiator by Iran's new government in 2021.
The Iranian foreign minister’s rhetoric about hardliners both in Iran and the United States was also not very different from his predecessor, Javad Zarif’s oft used line of argument, to show that his positions were moderate and those critical of Iran in the West were hardliners.
Meanwhile, the Iranian foreign minister for the first time "strongly condemned the war in Ukraine" without mentioning Russia's role. The Iran diplomacy wrote, "Undoubtedly, the foreign ministry is not courageous enough to make the same statement in Iran." The website also explained that the condemning the war in Ukraine could have been an indirect attack on Russia for its negative role in the talks and taking oil market share from Iran by selling its oil cheaper to China.
However, the website noted that although in many cases, Amir-Abdollahian's statements on Iran's foreign policy followed the party line, in some instances it appeared he got too close to Tehran's red lines.
Amir-Abdollahian, who spoke in Persian throughout the 35-minute conversation looked calmer and on top of the subject matter in most parts of the conversation, unlike his previous international appearances. He sounded like a very good speaker, at least in Persian. His points of weakness were revealed only when he answered questions on relations with Saudi Arabia, which later met with an indirect denial by his Saudi counterpart.
His accusation that the United States did not fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Syria were also not the highlight of this conversation as they were similar to Iranian officials' run-off-the-mill answers to such questions and were devoid of any insight.
Similarly, his statement that "We have intelligence the Zionists have taken US foreign policy hostage," was a repetition of Tehran's ragged argument about the issue throughout the past four decades.
A new video posted on social mediaon Friday shows that tall concrete walls and poles for surveillance cameras are being erected around Khavaran cemetery, southeast of Tehran.
In a statement Friday, Justice-Seekers of Khavaran, a group of families of the victims and survivors of the prison purges, called on authorities to immediately stop more barriers to the resting place of their loved ones, and said they will launch an international campaign to make their voices heard by the international community.
In 1988, an unknown number of executed prisoners were buried in mass and individual graves at Khavaran which had previously been used to bury non-Muslims including Armenian Christians, Hindus and members of the persecuted Baha’i faith.
Authorities have never disclosed the number of those executed in prisons across the country from August 1988 until February 1989. Between 4,500 and 10,000 prisoners are believed to have been killed. Almost all victims were serving prison terms when clerical rulers decided to eliminate them.
Most victims were members or supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) as well as Marxists and other members of other leftists groups.
Justice for Iran, a London-based rights organization, in a tweet on Saturday said restricting access to the site of mass graves allows the Islamic Republic to further destroy evidence of the crimes it has committed. Mass graves are crime scenes and must remain intact until they can be independently investigated to identify the remains of the victims and the sequence of events when the crimes happened, the rights organization said.
In 2018 Justice for Iran published a report on mass graves of political prisoners in various Iranian cities including Khavaran. According to the report, authorities have on numerous occasions tried to destroy evidence of the burials at Khavaran and other places, including by bulldozing the sites.
The unmarked graves in Khavaran were discovered soon after the executions by victims’ relatives who were never told where their loved ones had been buried. At Khavaran they found limbs and partially buried bodies of victims in shallow unmarked mass graves.
The news about the graves soon spread among those in search of the graves of their loved ones and the cemetery itself took the place of graves never found as many who regularly go there have no evidence of their loved one is buried there. Victims’ families call the cemetery “The Flower Garden of Khavaran”.
Despite constant harassment and persecution, Mothers of Khavaran, a group of mothers and families of victims, have fought for over three decades to bring the authorities to reveal the burial places of their loved ones.
In April 2021, members of the prosecuted Baha’i religious community in Tehran were ordered to bury their dead on the site of a mass grave at Khavaran although they said their own allocated site still had plenty of burial space. They were also told that the remains of the executed prisoners had been exhumed.
"This is the latest in a series of criminal attempts over the years by Iran's authorities to destroy mass grave sites of the 1988 prison massacres in a bid to eliminate crucial evidence of crimes against humanity," said Amnesty International's deputy Middle East director, Diana Eltahawy following the Baha’i community’s revelation.