Did Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps shoot down the Ukrainian passenger plane?

Judging by the statements put out by Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Justin Trudeau, there is more than sufficient intelligence to show that an Iranian air-defence unit panicked when it saw a large object in the sky within hours of Tehran's swarm of ballistic missiles hitting US-occupied bases across the border in Iraq and ordered a missile launch to bring it down. IT was a Ukrainian commercial aircraft carrying 176 people out of Tehran airport. A terrible mistake? Surely yes. Did the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps air-defence commanders think it was a B-52 bomber coming to strike revenge, as Donald Trump threatened he would? Probably yes. They had seconds to make a decision and they took the wrong one. Ironically, it was that type of split-second decision which ended up with a US Navy warship shooting down an Iranian airliner with 290 people on board on July 3 1988. The commanding officer of the guided-missile cruiser, USS Vincennes, thought the plane was an Iranian military aircraft coming to attack his warship. Terribly wrong judgments in each case brought on by panic and stress and a fear of failing to take action. But in this case Iran has resolutely refused to acknowledge that two surface-to-air missiles were fired at the Ukrainian plane. Officials, including the Iranian ambassador in London, have denied and denied that it was a missile hit and claimed it was a technical fault. No one, especially Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, believes that. The failure in the air was so sudden and so dramatic and without warning that it looked far more likely to be a missile strike - and that was before the US satellite evidence emerged of two missiles heading for the aircraft. The Iranians are desperately trying to destroy the evidence by bulldozing the crash site, removing any bits of surface-to-air missile and THEN inviting Boeing to come and have a look. The black box won't help because apparently there had been no warning of anything untoward, so the pilots were just happily getting on with the business of flying the plane out of Iranian airspace. So unless the US reveals all the evidence and makes public every scrap of intelligence it and allies Britain and Canada gathered before the attack - which they won't do for obvious reasons - the Iranian denials might hold up. The death of 176 people is a huge tragedy and the victims' families will want to know the truth. But will they ever get it? No doubt if Iran ever does accept the blame, the ayatollahs will say it was all America's fault because of the assassination of Soleimani and Trump's threat to strike back if US interests were attacked.