Bottom line: if the US had not murdered soleimani, 176 passengers/crew would be SAFELY home now

In the following you will find our translation of part of a report from the Russian site polit.info with commentary and notes [in brackets] by Vince Dhimos. If this had been posted at RIA Novosti, I would be less skeptical, but polit.info is a bit further down the food chain and I am sceptical for several reasons. Firstly, no other site is reporting the words of the political expert quoted in this report. Secondly, there is no confirmation at the two top Iranian sites, Tehran Times and Mehr News. Thirdly, if there were over ten US killer drones near the airport as averred by the quoted expert, why would the Iranians have hit only the airliner and not at least one of those?
 
On the other hand, I can think of a reason why the Iranians might hesitate to announce that there were US drones all over the sky at the time of the shoot-down, and that is, Iran is not keen on admitting that its air defence are not adequate to defend the national airport, whereas the Russians would have a motive for letting the cat out of the bag, namely, to make it clear to the US that Iran needs the S-400 air defences, and to remind Iran that it is time to negotiate the sale of this Russian system, which could have downed the drones. If the vulnerability of the Iranian airport is bruited to the world, no one would blame Iran for wanting to buy the Russian air defence system.
 
We will need to await confirmation in an independent report, which could pop up later.
 
So why did I rush to post the translation of a dubious report? Because the US issues dubious reports all the time but unlike me, they don’t issue dislcaimers. The State Department’s report that Soleimani was supposedly plotting terror acts against US personnel sounded so phony that several senators complained that they did not find it quite believable. In fact, one Republican senator Mike Lee said he found it “insulting and demeaning” when Pompeo ducked questions on Iran and Republican Senator Rand Paul said the briefing was “absurd” and “an insult.” For our part, before the senators critiqued the report, we wrote a commentary saying the report "smelled funny" and enumerating the reasons why.
 
This Russian report has a ring of truth to it in that callously hiding behind civilian or other aircraft for the purpose of inducing national air defences to fire on them would be nothing new. This is exactly what the Israeli defence forces did on September 17, 2018, with its fighter jets firing on Syria while hiding behind a Russian Il-20, prompting the Syrians to return fire and accidentally hitting the Russian plane, killing 15 Russian crew members.
 
And here is the thing. If the US government can issue a smelly report that senators thought was dubious at best, and can cold-bloodedly murder a dozen people on the strength of this report, we can certainly also post a translation of a Russian report that, while not fully confirmed, is at least written by a political expert in a country with friendly ties to Iran where the report would have originated, and include caveats expressing our doubts. The bottom line is that no reports can be confirmed 100%. We should therefore be ever vigilant. Giving credence to a government that has a history of lying to start and promote wars is by far a worse mistake than at least listening to what people are saying in parts of the world where no one routinely lies to induce gullible citizens to support a war effort with zero justification.
 
One thing is undeniable. If the US had not murdered General Soleimani, the most popular military figure in Iran, the air defence personnel at the Tehran airport would not have been on high alert and therefore quick on the trigger. And all 176 passengers on board flight 752 would be safely at home now.
 
BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
Over 10 US killer drones were hiding behind civilian aircraft at the time of the Boeing tragedy in Iran
 
Military expert and head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis, Alexander Mikhailov, in an interview with Nation News, agreed that the crash of the Boeing is a result of provocations from the United States.
 
“Personally, I believe that there was an American provocation, because at that moment there were more than ten drones in the air. And the movements of these airborne vehicles themselves provoked the Iranian Air Force, all the more so as it was attack drones that could always start shelling. Regarding the Americans, they will milk this situation to their advantage and, obviously, will begin to set conditions and beat on this catastrophe,” the expert said.
 
Mikhailov noted that Iran in a conflict with the United States demonstrated decent missile weapons and showed "its resolve."
 
“We saw photographs of American bases, and there was severe damage – all the missiles hit the target [It is in fact reported that some missed]. So Iran has demonstrated its resolve, not everyone will make such a decision,” Mikhailov said.
 
In this situation, Iran has made it clear to the whole world that US escalation can be put to an end. Experts believe that all Middle Eastern countries should declare that they do not want to see the American contingent on their territory.
 
END TRANSLATION