KYIV, Ukraine -- Iran's admission that its forces errantly downed a Ukrainian jetliner -- reversing three days of denial -- did little to quell growing fury inside the country and beyond on Saturday as the tragedy turned into a political crisis for Tehran's leaders and overshadowed their struggle with the United States.
Ukrainian officials criticized Iran's conduct, suggesting that the Iranians would not have admitted responsibility if investigators from Ukraine had not found evidence of a missile strike in the wreckage of the crash, which killed all 176 people aboard.
Protests broke out in Tehran and other Iranian cities as citizens directed anger and mistrust at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, and other officials. Protest videos even showed some shouting "Khamenei is a murderer!" and anti-riot police tear-gassing unruly demonstrators.
Both Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said they did not learn the true cause of the plane crash until an internal military investigation had been completed on Friday. But that assertion raised new questions about how the two top leaders in the hierarchy -- Khamenei is the commander in chief -- could not have known.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his first reaction to Iran's announcement, said his country would "insist on a full admission of guilt" by Tehran. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, home to many of those aboard the destroyed jetliner, demanded a "full and complete investigation" and said "Iran must take full responsibility." Both spoke by phone with Rouhani.
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Contradictions and miscues complicated Iran's message even as it took responsibility for the disaster. Iran's military, in its initial admission early Saturday, said the flight's crew had made a sharp, unexpected turn that took it near a sensitive military base -- an assertion that was immediately disputed by the Ukrainians.
Hours later, an Iranian commander who accepted full responsibility for the disaster agreed that the Ukrainians were right.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the aerospace division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said his unit accepts full responsibility for the shoot-down. In an address broadcast by state TV outlets, he said that when he learned about the downing of the plane, "I wished I was dead."
"The plane was flying in its normal direction without any error and everybody was doing their job correctly," said Hajizadeh. "If there was a mistake, it was made by one of our members."
He said he raised the possibility to his superiors as early as Wednesday morning that his forces shot down the plane because "the simultaneous occurrence of the launch and crash was suspicious."
The Ukrainians further accused Iran of having recklessly permitted commercial flights during a security emergency and of having violated universally accepted procedures for a post-crash investigation. Bulldozers had heaped debris from the plane into piles on the ground.
"Everything was done absolutely inappropriately," said Oleksiy Danilov, the Ukrainian security official overseeing the crash inquiry, referring to how Iranian authorities had handled the crash site.
Within Iran, as citizens vented anger toward their government, officials offered a mix of contrition and an insistence that Iran was not solely to blame. Rouhani called the error an "unforgivable mistake."
Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote in an apology posted on Twitter: "Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster."
But the official expressions of remorse did nothing to mollify angry Iranians who only a few days earlier were united in grief over the American killing of Revolutionary Guard leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Now they were once again out en masse protesting their government.
Some protest images posted on Iranian social media platforms even showed torn photos of Soleimani.
"Death to liars!" and "Death to the dictator!" shouted Iranians gathered in squares in the capital, Tehran, videos on social media showed. "You have no shame!" shouted several young men, and the crowd joined in a chorus.
President Donald Trump tweeted messages of support to Iranians who back protests of the government, saying he and his administration are behind them. In the tweets, Trump called on the Iranian government to allow human-rights groups to monitor the protests and expressed support for the "brave, long-suffering people" of Iran.
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The criticism of Iran over the crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737-800, now threatens to eclipse whatever international sympathy Iran has garnered in its escalating confrontation with the Trump administration.
In Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was among the first U.S. officials to accuse the country of shooting down the Ukrainian jetliner, posted a message Saturday on Twitter that clearly alluded to the anger in Iran.
"The voice of the Iranian people is clear," Pompeo wrote. "They are fed up with the regime's lies, corruption, ineptitude and brutality."
Also, the prospects of rescuing the nuclear accord could be hurt by Iran's admission Saturday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in Moscow on Saturday to discuss growing tensions in the Middle East and other issues.
Germany and Russia are among the world powers that have been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after the United States withdrew from the agreement unilaterally in 2018.
After her meeting with Putin, Merkel said of the plane catastrophe in Tehran: "It is good that those who are responsible are known and I believe that everything has to be done now to find a solution with those countries where those who are affected came from."
The plane went down in fiery destruction just a few minutes departing Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport Wednesday morning, only hours after Iranian military forces had fired a barrage of missiles at bases in Iraq housing American troops in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani by a U.S. drone in Baghdad on Jan. 3.
For three days after the crash, Iranian officials not only denied their military forces were responsible but blamed what they called the aircraft's mechanical problems and said suggestions of Iranian culpability were U.S. propaganda.
Danilov, the Ukrainian security official, said Iran had been forced into conceding its military had downed the jet because the evidence of a missile strike had become overwhelmingly clear to international investigators.
He said Ukrainian experts on the ground in Iran had gathered such evidence since their arrival on Thursday despite apparent Iranian efforts to complicate the investigation, including by sweeping debris into piles rather than carefully documenting it.
"When a catastrophe happens, everything is supposed to stay in its place," he said. "Every element is described, every element is photographed, every element is fixed in terms of its location and coordinates. To our great regret, this was not done."
Zelenskiy's office posted on Facebook photos of plane wreckage and a Canadian man's passport showing small piercings -- consistent with the hypothesis that shrapnel from a surface-to-air missile hit the plane.
"We expect Iran to assure its readiness for a full and open investigation, to bring those responsible to justice, to return the bodies of the victims, to pay compensation, and to make official apologies through diplomatic channels," Zelenskiy said in a post on his Facebook page. "We hope that the investigation will continue without artificial delays and obstacles."
Rouhani, in a statement cited by the Fars News Agency, offered condolences to the victims' families and said that "the terrible catastrophe should be thoroughly investigated."
The crew received no warning before leaving Tehran, Ukrainian officials said. The plane took off as Ukrainian flights from Iran had dozens of times before, and followed the same departure routes as other airliners leaving that morning, Ihor Sosnovsky, the vice president for flight operations, told journalists.
"There was no deviation from any routes that some are hinting at," he said.
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The crew maintained normal radio contact with the tower in Tehran, he said, and followed a standard departure procedure for the airport. After reaching an altitude of 6,000 feet, the plane was instructed to make a slight northerly turn. In the last communication, he said, one of the pilots read back this instruction from the tower, saying "turn and climb."
Addressing criticism that the airline should not have sent a plane to Iran at all, in light of tensions in the region, the airline officials said it was Iran's responsibility to close airspace if it had intended to fire missiles.
Hajizadeh, the Iranian official who accepted responsibility for the missile strike, said the plane had been misidentified as a cruise missile and was shot down with a short-range missile that exploded near the plane.
Asked why Iranian airspace was not shut to commercial air traffic while Iran's defense forces were on alert for attacks, Hajizadeh had no clear answer.
Meanwhile, the U.K. ambassador to Iran was "briefly detained" by Iranian authorities on Saturday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.
Ambassador Rob Macaire was arrested and held for three hours after attending a vigil for the victims of the Tehran plane crash, which had turned into demonstration, the Telegraph reported.
"The arrest of our Ambassador in Tehran without grounds or explanation is a flagrant violation of international law," Raab said in a statement.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said the action was a violation of the Vienna Convention, which ensures immunity and privileges for foreign diplomats.
Information for this article was contributed by Anton Troianovski, Andrew E. Kramer and Farnaz Fassihi of The New York Times; by Nasser Karimi, Joseph Krauss, Jon Gambrell, Rob Gillies, Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov and Yuras Karmanau of The Associated Press; and by Meghan Genovese of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/12/2020