February 26, 2021
Air raid sirens screamed for about 15 minutes the night of January 29 all over northwest Tehran, but the government does not appear to know what happened as officials keep giving different explanations.
Some websites were reported to be unreachable the same night, but there was no obvious link between that fact and the blaring sirens.
A rumor flashing around the city held that Israeli fighter jets had entered Tehran’s air space. The Tasnim news agency said that was not true, pointing out that Israel’s newest F-35 jets don’t have the range to get to Tehran and return to Israel without aerial refueling. Some folks speculated that the Saudis had provided refueling under the new Arab coziness with Israel. But few believed that and rightwing Israelis who would delight at such an event gave no credence to those reports. Furthermore, Israeli aircraft should have triggered a city-wide alarm.
Hamid-Reza Goodarzi, the deputy governor general of Tehran province for security, gave the most innocent explanation. He said the sirens were triggered by water leaking into the mechanism for the sirens during a rainstorm. Later he modified that to say there had been a malfunction in the electrical system in the Azmayesh District.
A third explanation going the rounds that got the most official and media attention was that the sirens were set off by a Turkish airliner that was approaching Tehran’s airport but then turned away because of bad weather and flew north to Baku. No one explained why sirens would be set off by a plane flying at the high altitudes used by commercial planes, but not by military aircraft although some websites and individuals insisted the Turkish plane had come close to an air defense battery protecting a ballistic missile plant.
Still, it was more in keeping with normal procedures to blame anything untoward that happens on foreigners and the Turks are not in good stead in the Islamic Republic right now, so they make a handy target.
The head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Touraj Dehqani-Zangeneh, said, “We have expressed our protest to Turkey and the Turkish Civil Aviation Authority and asked them for an explanation” of why the aircraft chose to go to Baku, which is one of the assigned alternatives for planes unable to land in Tehran.
Transport Minister Moham-mad Eslami said, “The behavior of the Turkish pilot was not logical and he could have landed at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.”
The Mehr news agency quoted Imam Khomeini International Airport as saying the Turkish flight diverted because of bad weather.
The most likely explanation remains rainwater leaking into the siren mechanism.