In a reaction to the release of the audio file of the conversation between a domestic airline pilot and the control tower at Imam Khomeini airport, MP Bahram Parsaei asked the government officials to respond to the contradictions between the government’s claims and the facts of the case.

In an interview with state-owned ISNA, MP Parsaei said: “How is it that the head of Civil Aviation Organization knew about the issue but the Minister of Roads and City Planning and the government claim ignorance and say they only found out about it a few hours before the statement made by the armed forces?”

“This is an ambiguity that the government must officially respond to for the sake of public opinion,” Parsaei added.

He continued: “The released audio file clearly shows that the Aviation Organization was aware of the cause of the incident and there is no ambiguity.”

On Monday Morning, a news agency in Ukraine released an audio file in which an Iranian domestic airline pilot who was flying at the same time as the Ukrainian plane tells the control tower that he has witnessed a missile being fired and hit the plane.

Parsaei criticized what he called “intentional false claims” made by the Aviation Organization, experts, and the accident investigation committee and said: “How is it that the Aviation Organization, a government organization, was aware of the incident but the president and the cabinet claim to be in the dark?”

For three days after the shooting down of the Ukrainian plane, the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization denied the report of the plane being hit by a missile and rejected it as a “logical and scientific” impossibility.

The spokesman for the government, Ali Rabiei, had also claimed that the president and the cabinet found out about the incident after the fact and their initial claims were due to “ignorance and national pride.”