During the night from Jan 8th to Jan 9th 2020 somebody on Twitter released a photo of a Tor 9K331 warhead presumably found at the crash site (and temporarily even the reader comments below flooded over referencing that photo). The location as well as the authenticity of the photo were not verifyable. The Aviation Herald therefore sent an inquiry to Iran's AIB with the photo, the supposed location at the crash site and relevant links in support and contradicting the authenticity of that photo and asked, whether the accident investigation had found such a part (expressing the hope that these issues wouldn't add too much to the stresses of the AIB).
Iran's AIB Chairman Hassan Rezaeifar responded stating: "We save evidence and wreckage of the aircraft and never found this part. All wreckage parts were transferred to the special hanger in order to investigate with cooperation of NTSB, Ukraine NBAI and other interest parties which has been invited officially." Mr. Rezaeifar continued: "Due to special political condition of my country, we instituted a special group more than technical accident investigation groups to assess the condition of Laser attack or dangerous good- electromagnetic (radioactive threat) and unlawful action. The initial conclusion of this group confirmed that there was not found any evidence of mentioned actions on the accident site. Also we will trace all other evidences of the accident by gathering all information of the accident." The chairman indicated the AIB plans to release a preliminary first report in English during Jan 9th 2020.