Tehran alleged that the flydubai cockpit incident was a staged provocation jointly engineered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, framing the episode as a deliberate deception rather than a genuine event.
Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster, attributed three motives to the incident in its coverage: deflecting scrutiny from the October 7 Hamas attack, strengthening Netanyahu's domestic standing, and providing grounds for a fresh round of hostilities with Iran.
Those claims surfaced alongside a broader pattern of unverified online posts attributing the flydubai cockpit incident to a coordinated deception, with various accounts pointing to Israel, Mossad, and Netanyahu as having orchestrated the episode to serve political ends — whether shifting voter sentiment, drawing attention away from domestic matters, or stoking tensions across the region. No independent verification has confirmed the assertions in question.
Questions about what drove the co-pilot's actions — and whether outside direction, advance planning, or any connection to terrorism played a role — remained open as the inquiry continued.
According to a document, the flydubai episode was portrayed as something Netanyahu and bin Zayed had jointly arranged as part of a broader plan. The allegation was connected to a trip Netanyahu reportedly made to Abu Dhabi shortly before the flydubai episode — a visit during which he and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan are said to have held talks.
Reports of the meeting emerged alongside growing scrutiny tied to claims that bin Zayed had, at some point before events unfolded, passed word to Netanyahu about an impending Hamas operation. The document described a scheme in which a flydubai aircraft carrying numerous Israeli passengers would be targeted to produce a high-visibility security event, staged to resemble a terrorist attack and attributed to Iran.
According to the document, the security anxieties it identified stood to bolster Netanyahu's standing on defence issues and build backing for a fresh military offensive against Iran.
Travelling between Dubai and Tel Aviv, Flydubai Flight FZ1073 broadcast distress signals while its altitude dropped by more than 17,000 feet from a cruising height of 34,000 feet. Following an alleged physical confrontation between the co-pilot and the captain inside the cockpit, the flight was rerouted to Prince Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz Airport in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Of the 174 people aboard the aircraft, 27 were children.
The incident drew a swift designation of "terrorism" from both Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, the report noted. Netanyahu drew a comparison between the incident and the September 11 attacks, put forward a claim that the Omani co-pilot had been subjected to "radical indoctrination," and pointed to the possibility of Iranian involvement.
Posts linking Jewish people to the flydubai attack circulated on social media platforms, prompting the Israeli Embassy in Australia to issue a statement characterising those claims as without factual basis, a news outlet reported. The embassy's written statement characterised circulating claims that Israel orchestrated the attack as antisemitic conspiracy theories rooted in fabricated pretexts.
Trump raised the possibility of Iranian involvement in the flydubai cockpit incident, making those remarks roughly 24 hours after the flight between Dubai and Tel Aviv was interrupted. Responding to a question on the matter, he indicated that the information available to him pointed toward an affirmative answer, though he noted that verification was still under way.
When a reporter posed the question of whether he had received any briefing on a potential link between the suspect and Iran, Trump indicated that his team was looking into it, adding that the matter was under active review at that moment. Trump indicated that, based on what he was hearing at the time, the answer was likely yes, though he noted the matter was still being worked through.
Asked whether the United States would take military action against Iran if that country were determined to have carried out the attack, Trump indicated that a forceful response would follow, telling reporters not to doubt it.
