The aerospace commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Saturday accepted full responsibility for the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet that killed all 176 people on board.
“I take full responsibility and I will obey whatever decision is taken,” Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said in remarks broadcast on state television. “I would prefer to die rather than witness such an incident.”
Hajizadeh also said the missile exploded next to the Ukraine International Airlines jet before it went down.
“It was a short-range missile that exploded next to the plane. That’s why the plane was able” to continue flying for a while, he said. “It exploded when it hit the ground.”
Iran’s armed forces said they mistook the passenger plane for a hostile target in the tense aftermath of Iran’s ballistic missile attack on two military bases in Iraq housing US troops. That attack was retaliation for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, in an American airstrike in Baghdad.
Hajizadeh said Revolutionary Guard forces ringing the capital had beefed up their air defenses and were at the “highest level of readiness,” fearing that the US would retaliate. He said an officer made the “bad decision” to open fire on the plane after mistaking it for a cruise missile.
He said the missile operator opened fire independently because of communications “jamming” and only had 10 seconds to decide whether or not to launch.
A statement from the armed forces expressed “condolences and sympathy” for the families of those who died, giving an assurance that a “repetition of such mistakes would become impossible” through changes in operational procedures.
It stressed the plane was shot down “unintentionally” and said the armed forces would immediately present the “culprit” to the judiciary.
After Tehran admitted to downing the airliner, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was to have a phone conversation with Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani later Saturday, officials said.
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