Iranian mistake (1).

Byline: M Khalid Kamal - Doha, Qatar

IRAN has admitted shooting down the Ukraine airliner unintentionally. This amounts to murder of 176 innocent lives. Although Iranian air defence was under tremendous pressure owing to the scenario created by the assassination of Iran's top military commander, it was a deadly mistake to fire at a civilian airliner.

The Iranian civil aviation authority should have closed the airspace and stopped all flight operations before carrying out retaliatory strikes.

Owing to the fast developing cyber technology it is not difficult to distinguish between a civilian aircraft and the military ones and Iran's air defence system is quite capable of it. One example is the shooting down of an American drone in the Strait of Hormuz but letting go of military aircraft as...