The Moral Burden of Unintended Consequence
Thirty years ago, a U.S. navy ship shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 civilians; we are still bringing planes down with our sanctions
On July 3, 1988, the U.S. Navy ship Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf en route to Dubai. This added yet another heartbreaking page to the collective grievances between Iran and the United States. Right after the incident, the U.S. navy officials called it an accident. However, a few years later, independent reports such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) declared the U.S. navy USS Vincennes was “well inside” Iran’s territorial waters at the time of the incident, unlike the official navy statements.
This was one of the deadliest airline disasters of all time. All 290 innocent passengers, including 66 children, onboard lost their lives. While it is difficult to compare tragedies, reflecting upon our own troubles could help us better empathize with the suffering of others. How does it feel to lose 290 innocent lives?
- If you’re American, think about 10x the number of students lost in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.
- If you’re French, think about 2x the number of casualties in the 2015 attacks in Paris, the single deadliest terrorist attack in French history.
- If you’re British, think about 5x the number of victims in the 2005 London bombings, one of the biggest incidents in Britain’s history in the past few decades.
- If you’re Indian, think about 1.5x the number of deaths in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, one of the bloodiest incidents in modern Indian history.
Since 1988, U.S. sanctions have prevented Iran from buying new aircraft or much-needed spare parts for their current fleet. With a majority of its airplanes predating the 1979 revolution, Iran has one of the oldest fleets in the world. Within the past three decades, there have been more than 30 aviation accidents resulting in more than 2,000 fatalities and many more injuries. The most recent incident happened earlier this year when a 20-year-old Aseman Airlines plane crashed, killing all 66 passengers and crew on the flight from Tehran to Yasuj. With Iran’s badly outdated air fleet such disasters are waiting to happen at practically any moment.
The unintended consequences of U.S. sanctions have been impacting Iranian lives in every possible way. The odds that a passenger will die on an Iranian flight is dozens of times higher than on other major carriers. Tragedies of this scale, over such an extended period of time demonstrate how sanctions serve to collectively punish the Iranian people and cost them their families. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in a 2005 report concluded: “the United States sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran have adversely affected the safety of civil aviation.” The findings of ICAO should be upsetting to anyone who is committed to the safety of civil aviation and the safety of air transport.
The lifting of nuclear-related sanctions under President Obama in 2016 was the start of a brighter era to help Iranian airlines rejuvenate their fleets. The deal lifted the ban on commercial airplane exports to Iran. As a result, IranAir signed a deal to buy 100 aircraft from Airbus and Aseman Airlines had 30 jets on order. The deals were worth $39 billion and could have produced more jobs in the United States. Unfortunately, in May of 2018 President Trump chose to revoke the agreement and blocked aircraft sales to Iran by reimposing the sanctions, and politics overcame empathy yet another time.
Plane crashes are an ugly truth of daily life for Iranians, and U.S. sanctions are playing an indirect but pivotal role. Iran is the only country still flying Boeing 727 passenger planes, over thirty years after their production was ended. The unintended consequences of sanctions have barred them from the acquisition of essentials for aviation safety. Young and aspiring Iranians are paying the price of a revolution that they have never witnessed in their lifetime. The sanctions are in contradiction with both the letter and spirit of the Chicago Convention, a landmark agreement proposed by the United States, to establish the principles for international aviation. Thus, the moral responsibilities of those lives lost are on us. The United States needs to reconsider its strategy with Iran and make sure it is not harming innocent civilians. We should let the younger face of Iran live safer and aspire to be a better version of itself. Thirty years after the U.S. navy shot down an Iranian passenger airplane, lifting sanctions on civilian aircraft is the least the U.S. can do to amend those lives lost.
