Gosh, Iran Just Can’t Remember Where It Put Black Box From Downed Airliner

“You’re not going to believe this.”

FARS news agency

Tehran, January 23 – Backtracking on an earlier refusal to supply the flight data recorder from a civilian passenger jet that the regime’s air defense batteries shot down two weeks ago, the Islamic Republic announced it would indeed hand the device over to investigators, but, wouldn’t you know it, the thing seems to have disappeared and they’re not sure where. Bummer!

A spokesman for President Hassan Rouhani told reporters Thursday that his administration and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had changed their minds on the matter for approximately the fourth time so far, and will in fact cooperate with teams of international experts on determining how and why Iran’s air defense system fired more than one surface-to-air missile at a Ukrainian Airlines aircraft, resulting in an explosion and crash that killed all 176 people aboard. The president rendered his latest decision in consultation with various other senior regime figures, disclosed his representative Dawaz Intmi, only to discover that, whoops, no one seems to know where they left the “black box” collected from the crash site the night of the incident. Huh.

“Iran will provide its full cooperation in the interest of transparency and prevention of future such incidents,” stated Mr. Intmi. “The investigators are welcome to pick up the instrument from our warehouses in Tehran at their leisure. Just, and here’s the thing, we appear to have misplaced it. I’m sure it’ll turn up; these things always do. You know how it is. It was right there a moment ago! Don’t you hate it when this happens? We swear, there must be goblins or gremlins or something that makes important things disappear into a different dimension the moment before you need them, haha.”

Intmi assured journalists and foreign diplomats that Iran was not trying to obfuscate its role in shooting down the airliner. “We have already taken disciplinary measures against the radar and missile crews responsible for this tragedy,” he insisted. “We ourselves are in the midst of a thorough procedural investigation to get to the bottom of this situation and take measures to revamp our procedures to prevent a recurrence. Of course it would help to have the data recorder available, but, well, it’s a funny thing. You’re not going to believe this. You know that black box? Well, it seems to be a little too black to find, if you catch my meaning.”

“But we’ll keep looking, I promise!” he vowed. “We’ll let you know as soon as it turns up! À propos of nothing, weren’t you all busy blaming Trump for this? What ever happened with that?”

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