Blaming Iranian political reformers and the
West for yesterday's horrific air crash in northwest Iran, this article by columnist
Kian Mokhtari of Iran's state-funded Kayhan lashes out at former President
Khatami for seeking to replace Iran's passenger fleet with Western aircraft -
and the West for not selling them to him. On the other hand, he also blames the
bad reputation of Russian aircraft on Western propaganda.
Iran's former President Khatami: The Iranian regime is taking advantage of an aviation tragedy to attack him and other Iranians who have complained about the handling of the recent presidential election.
A Caspian Airlines flight from
Iran, a Tupolev Tu-154
M-3, caught fire shortly after takeoff from Imam Khomeini International Airport.
Crashing 16 minutes into the flight, all 168 passengers and crew were lost.
This type of craft is the
most advanced and reliable in the Tu-154 M-3 series, but almost since its
conception, few aircraft have been plagued by as many problems.
Needing to upgrade its entire
civilian fleet, in 1997-98, the Islamic Republic was approached by sales people
from two companies, Tupolev and
Ilyushin. Tupolev was
offering its latest model, the Tu-204, which is
considered a mid-range, Boeing 757 equivalent. Ilyushin had the Il-96-300, which is a wide-body,
long range carrier equivalent to a Boeing 747.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Both aircraft have excellent safety
records, nor have any been lost in accidents. Both comply with the latest E.U. environmental
and noise regulations. On course toward a supposed rapprochement with the West
at the time, the government of Mohammad
Khatami held back on purchasing a Russian fleet.
In any case, even under
President Khatami, the West refused to sell passenger aircraft to Iran - presumably
because it felt 100 hundred years of looting Iran’s resources wasn't sufficient,
and that a puppet regime in Tehran should be a prerequisite to any such sales.
During President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad’s first term, Iran ultimately ordered 35 Tu-204-100s. They have yet
to be delivered.
Since the victory of the 1979
Islamic Revolution, the West has had a magnifying glass on every aspect of
Iranian life, so it must be aware that our civilian aviation sector requires
new aircraft. The West must also be aware that civilian lives in Iran are being
put at risk due to a lack of new aircraft.
The question for the West is:
Why in Western eyes are are Iranian lives lost during post-election riots on the
streets of Tehran worth so much, while hundreds of thousands of Iranian air
travelers are worth so little? To anyone familiar with the West's decades-old plans
to exploit Iranian resources with a convenient puppet regime, the answer is
pretty obvious.
Fellow
demonstrators struggle to stop the bleeding of a young girl
named Neda Agha Soltan, June 12. She was shot
down by thepro-
regime Basij - vigilantes that act
as enforcers for the Iran regime.
Do Westerners care more about her death than those killed in
Wednesday's air crash?This video is
not
for children:
Anyone fooled into dying for
the Western cause on the streets of Tehran is an asset to them, because it
brings the West that much closer to their sordid aims. But thousands of
Iranians can perish in aircraft disasters for all they care, because no
political capital can be reaped from their deaths.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Don’t forget, we're talking about
powers whose warships violate Iran's territorial waters and shoot down its
passenger aircraft [reference to Iran Air Flight 655, shot down by the U.S. in 1988.]
However, just weeks ago a
late model Air France Airbus A-330 went down in the Atlantic Ocean with all 228
lives aboard lost. And s brand new Airbus belonging to Yemeni Air Lines went
down only two weeks ago with the loss of everyone aboard.
So accidents do happen, and
they happen to everyone. Every type of aircraft will have them from time-to-time.
At least three dozen Boeing 747, 737 and 727 aircraft have been lost, while not
a single Ilyushin Il-96 has ever gone down. But thanks to Western propaganda,
it’s Russian aircraft that have got a bad name.
Iranian governments must at
least try to be astute. The West had no intention of selling aircraft to former
President Khatami, so when the time came for replacing Iran’s air fleet, his
government should have taken the opportunity to find aircraft elsewhere.
Iranian lives do matter, and
any responsible Iranian government should spare no effort to drive that point
home to West's so-called governments.
If we allow the criminals who
masquerade as statesmen in the West the slightest room to maneuver within Iran,
they will attempt genocides similar to those they imposed in Iraq, Afghanistan and
occupied Palestine. They call their acts of mass murder “resource management.”
Our lives mean nothing to
them - and that is where we have to start. From this moment on, a new airline
fleet is top of the agenda - and without any further "liberal"
hesitation.
