Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed near Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport minutes after takeoff on Wednesday. All 176 people on board were killed, among them nationals of Iran, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Canada, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The crash occurred shortly after Iran launched a massive attack against US bases in neighboring Iraq.

According to Rezaeifar, as cited by the IRNA news agency, Iran had to ask a third country to decode the black box as it lacked the necessary technology itself. He said that Iran had asked Canada, France and the United States to bring their software and hardware to Tehran to download the recorder's data, but they declined.

Rezaeifar was further cited as saying that Tehran then asked Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States to send the black box to an impartial country and all five agreed on France, a country with which Iran has an agreement for downloading black boxes.
These decisions, however, were taken before the Iranian General Staff made a statement on Saturday on that the plane was accidentally shot down by by Iranian forces.

On the morning of Saturday, Iran admitted that the Ukrainian plane had been unintentionally shot down by the country's military as they confused it with a hostile jet in anticipation of a retaliatory strike from the United States.