Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Who pays for the loss of life in Iran?

Kourosh Ziabari | 18.09.2010 14:13 | Analysis | Culture | History | World

"Iran’s aviation fleet which is chiefly comprised of Russian low-quality Tupelov and outdated Airbus and Fokker planes is one of the most vulnerable fleets in the world which suffers from increasing dilapidation and is considered to be highly at risk due to the unjust sanctions which are imposed against the country.

In December 2005, BBC World published a report in which it was expressively stated that Iran’s civil and military aviation fleet is undergoing intense safety setbacks. The report came after an Iranian Air Force C-130E military transport aircraft crashed into a residential complex in Tehran, killing 128 people including 68 reporters and journalists that were supposed to cover a military drill off the country’s southern coast on the Persian Gulf."

Lovely work of U.S. policy. So "humanitarian."

Kourosh Ziabari: Who pays for the loss of life in Iran?
By: Kourosh Ziabari on: 09.09.2010 [03:35 ] (284 reads)


Since the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 which toppled the U.S.-backed regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran has been facing with the devastating and agonizing financial sanctions of the United States and its European allies who didn’t favor the post-revolutionary Iran’s doctrine of confrontation with the superpowers and its denial of Western liberal democratic values.

The 1979 revolution which put an end to 2,500 years of imperial monarchy in Iran was pivoted on theocratic and ideological values which the sumptuous, thrilling West usually tends to dislike and rebuff. Under the spiritual leadership of Imam Khomeini, Iranians declared that they wouldn’t need the support of Western and Eastern superpowers, will stand on their own feet and only seek to realize a political regime which establishes its bases and principles in accordance with morality and Islamic solidarity.

Iran’s ideological disagreement with the West and its efforts to fulfill independence as an Islamic state, however, cost for the Iranian people heavily. First of all, the United States spurred its regional puppet, the late dictator Saddam Hussein, on to launch a massive, crushing war against Iran so as to push the country’s newly-established political regime to annihilation. The 8-year war demolished Iran’s infrastructures irreversibly, caused irreparable damages to country’s economy and left more than 350,000 Iranians dead.

The 8-year resistance of the Iranian people, however, rendered the plans of the U.S. and its Baathist ally futile. Iran rose from the rubbles of 8-year war with Iraq and set out to emerge as a regional superpower gradually. Iranians recreated the country’s war-torn economy once again, renewed the obliterated infrastructures, appeased the pains of the families of 350,000 martyrs with compassion and brought hopes to the hearts of those who had come to think that a political state with the ideological pillars of Islam would be impossible to survive.

The animosity of the United States and its cronies, however, didn’t seem to be ending. In 1984, the United States approved its first set of sanctions against Iran which would prohibit Washington from selling American weapons to Tehran. During the presidency of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, the sanctions got tougher and broader. In April 1995, President Bill Clinton issued a total embargo on U.S. dealings with Iran, banning every kind of financial transaction with the war-hit country. In 1996, the United States Congress passed the Iran–Libya Sanctions Act under which all the foreign firms and companies that provide investments over $20 million for the development of petrochemical projects in Iran would be penalized. The most inequitable and unreasonable sanctions against Iran, however, were those which would were endorsed in 1995 and disallowed the aviation companies around the world to sell aircrafts and repair parts to the Iranian airlines directly.

Iran’s aviation fleet which is chiefly comprised of Russian low-quality Tupelov and outdated Airbus and Fokker planes is one of the most vulnerable fleets in the world which suffers from increasing dilapidation and is considered to be highly at risk due to the unjust sanctions which are imposed against the country.

In December 2005, BBC World published a report in which it was expressively stated that Iran’s civil and military aviation fleet is undergoing intense safety setbacks. The report came after an Iranian Air Force C-130E military transport aircraft crashed into a residential complex in Tehran, killing 128 people including 68 reporters and journalists that were supposed to cover a military drill off the country’s southern coast on the Persian Gulf.

Two years earlier, a Russian-manufactured Ilyushin Il-76 transporter plane crashed in southeastern Iran, killing 302 passengers and cabin crew.

Iran has experienced several deadly air accidents in which hundreds of innocent civilians lost their lives. On July 15, 2009, the Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 heading from Tehran to Yerevan crashed near the village of Jannatabad in northern Iran, killing 168 passengers and cabin crews. Among the dead were all members of Iran’s national youth judo team members and several other prominent persons including a former parliament member and the wife of Georgian Ambassador to Tehran.

On July 24, 2009, another deadly plane crash happened in Iran which cost the life of 16 people. While attempting to land, the plane skidded off the runway and broke into a wall, killing 16 out of 153 passengers and crew members who were aboard the plane.

Unfortunately, the frequency of deadly plane crashes in Iran has been so high that made Iran’s aviation fleets one of the most insecure and unsafe ones in the world. Tens of people die each year as a result of a childish altercation which seems to have no rational basis. The United States has failed to dictate its political will to Iran and resorts to this failure as a pretext for punishing its people.

The United States and its European allies who boast of themselves as being the harbingers of human rights and liberty have obliviously forgotten that they are simply human beings who lose their lives as a result of the sanctions which they’ve devised. The civilian passengers who are destined to die in the insecure flights of Iran’s aviation fleet are the victims of those who have long trumpeted in our ears that they’re the sole defenders of human rights. If the life of each human being is respectable, then who is responsible for the lives of these hundreds of people who pass away before the eyes of the so-called international community which is always alert to caution about the violation of human rights in Iran and other independent countries? Isn’t the life of these people who get in the dilapidated Russian planes of Iran’s fleet and embrace death to the most extreme point of imagination respectable that you’ve deprived them of having the opportunity to experience a safe and secure trip? What’s the fault of Iran’s innocent civilians whom you’re punishing collectively?

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal

 http://surf6009.appspot.com/u?purl=L25hcmktbmktZWZpbC1mby1zc29sLWVodC1yb2Ytc3lhcC1vaHctaXJhYmFpei1oc29ydW9rLzkw%0ALzAxMDIvbW9jLmVuaXRzZWxhcC1hZGFmaXRuaS53d3cvLzpwdHRo%0A


Please spread widely. General Joe

Kourosh Ziabari

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech