France's aviation safety agency says received no requests from Iran as Tehran claims black boxes of no use

Iran has reached out to France with a request to decrypt the black boxes from Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 downed by Tehran in January, AFP reported Friday

The agency cited sources close to the investigation as saying that Tehran asked France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) to access the data on the flight recorders from the downed jet.

When asked for comments, the BEA denied to AFP that it had received any requests along these lines from Iran -- but added that it was "ready to look at any request" from Tehran.

Iran downed the Kiev-bound passenger jet on January 8, killing all 176 people on board. It initially claimed that the tragedy was likely a result of engine failure and reportedly sought to hamper the investigation by bulldozing the crash site.

Later on, it admitted the liner was downed by mistake and blamed the US for the tragedy as Tehran's air defenses at the moment were on high alert as it braced for possible retaliation after a ballistic strike on a base hosting US troops in Iraq.

The strike itself came as retaliation for a US drone attack that killed Iran's Quds force leader General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.

The black boxes are expected to contain information about the last moments before the aircraft was struck by a ground-to-air missile and crashed, shortly after taking off from the Tehran airport.

Despite reportedly lacking the technology and the know-how for extracting data from these, Iran has been reluctant to hand them over, recently claiming they sustained too much damage to be of any help.

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