"Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Saturday acknowledged that it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner..."

"Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guard’s aerospace division, said his unit accepts 'full responsibility' for the shootdown. In an address broadcast by state TV, he said that when he learned about the downing of the plane, 'I wished I was dead.' He said Guard forces ringing the capital had beefed up their air defenses and were at the 'highest level of readiness,' fearing that the U.S. would retaliate. He said an officer made the 'bad decision' to open fire on the plane after mistaking it for a cruise missile....  The majority of the plane crash victims were Iranians or Iranian-Canadians.... Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani blamed the shootdown of the plane in part on 'threats and bullying' by the United States after the killing of Soleimani.... 'A sad day,' Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted. 'Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster....' Iran’s acknowledgement of responsibility was likely to renew questions of why authorities did not shut down the country’s main international airport and its airspace after the ballistic missile attack, when they feared U.S. reprisals.... '"

AP reports.

ADDED: I object to the language "Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Saturday acknowledged that it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner...." The word "acknowledged" assumes that we know the truth and Iran is coming into alignment with that truth. But we don't know for certain. I understand the sloppiness of thinking that causes ordinary people to jump to "acknowledged" when they feel they know the truth, but journalism demands rigor. The New York Times headline for this story is properly done: "Iran Says It Unintentionally Shot Down Ukrainian Airliner."

BUT: I have to complain about the NYT headline. Iran does not deny that it intentionally shot at what it shot at. So there was intent. It needs to be reworded to isolate the part of the action that is claimed to have been unintentional. The NYT was better than AP, but if I were working on writing the headline, I would not stop where the NYT did. Iran's assertion is that it intentionally shot at something it wrongly believed was a cruise missile.