I’ve heard pretty much the same through the um “grapevine” so to speak.
Nobody ever figured out the who, what, or where of the unknown 30 knot surface track that was heading away from the crash area when all other surface contacts that night in the area converged on the crash.
They passed it off as a fishing boat or some other “commercial” vessel.
Actually they did. That's how they found out the Iranians were behind it. The people involved in the shootdown were allegedly hired by a wealthy Iranian family to get revenge on the United States for shooting down Iran Air Flight 655 back in 1988. The Iranian government claims there was no official sanction of the action, and that the individuals involved would all be punished, but who can believe anything those bastards say?
I wish I could say how I know this, but my source absolutely does not want any of these bits of information linked back to him/her, and I fully understand why.