Crap from conspiracy theorists

**Conspiracy Theorists' Versions**

The FlyDubai plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv was, in all likelihood, not targeted for hijacking by chance. Conspiracy theories began to emerge in the Arab, Iranian, and even Israeli media space almost immediately.

And they do not look fantastical at all. Donald Trump stated that he had discussed the incident with Benjamin Netanyahu, and then recounted in rather close detail the story of a passenger who allegedly helped save the plane. Reuters notes: Trump made a caveat that he "does not know how accurate all the details of the story are."

Flydubai maintained that the reasons for what happened are still unknown, ABC News writes. At the same time, Trump recently made a strange statement: allegedly, "certain events" related to the Iranian conflict will occur in the near future.

### The Iranian Version: Israel Was Preparing a False Flag Operation

The Fars agency, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), citing military intelligence, writes that Israel was allegedly preparing a mass-casualty operation on a plane or at an airport.

Sources close to the government told Fars: "The Zionist regime intends to commit a terrorist attack in the region and sacrifice civilians in order to place the responsibility for this on Iran."

Other Iranian publications claim that Mossad could have been behind the preparation of the provocation. The Iranian authorities have repeatedly accused Israel of "false flag operations." Back in 2019, Mossad was blamed for strikes on Saudi Aramco facilities.

This year, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei stated that the Israelis carried out drone and missile strikes on Turkey, Azerbaijan, Oman, and Cyprus, in order to then shift the blame to Iran and sour its relations with its neighbors.

Against the backdrop of previous accusations against Israel, the Arab outlet Shafaq News writes, the Iranian version of a new "false flag operation" looks quite logical. Although, as Shafaq News emphasizes, Iran has not presented any concrete evidence.

Israeli intelligence services were indeed involved in the work surrounding the incident: the Jerusalem Post reported that Mossad and Shin Bet participated even in approving the crew of the rescue flight. In a conspiracy interpretation, this turns into another question: if intelligence gets involved in the story so quickly, did it not know about what was happening in advance?

### "Israeli 9/11"

Israeli officials described what happened as a foiled attempt to repeat "9/11." Radicals believe that such a scenario is beneficial primarily to Israel itself — if the goal was to obtain the most convincing pretext for escalating the war with Iran.

Ynet writes that accusations of a "false flag operation" appeared about an hour after the first distress signal, when nothing was yet known about what was happening on board. According to the publication, in the first 12 hours, thousands of posts appeared on social media linking Flydubai to Israel, Mossad, and Netanyahu.

The version was quickly picked up in the Arab East as well. The Al-Raed portal questioned: what is the probability that Israel fabricated the story with the FlyDubai plane, and that this is nothing more than a show staged for political gain?

The Times of India published an article stating directly: social media users are linking the incident to Netanyahu's recent visit to the UAE and his warnings about possible attacks ahead of the elections in Israel.

The English-language information space also quickly picked up the conspiracy theory. A post by well-known conspiracy theorist Jackson Hinkle about the Israeli "staging" has already garnered over 1.5 million views. Another video, this one anonymous, gained hundreds of thousands of views: in it, AI generated a version about the connection of officials and Mossad to the FlyDubai hijacking.

The bottom line is this: the official investigation has only just begun, and the Omani pilot who attempted to hijack the plane is under heavy guard in Saudi Arabia. But neither his motives nor who else was involved in the terrorist attack have yet been established. And this breeds more and more conspiracy theories.