The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard whined on Sunday that he wished he was on the downed Ukrainian passenger jet so he could avoid the shame of making such a colossal mistake.

“I swear to almighty God that I wished I was on that plane and had crashed with them and burned but had not witnessed this tragic incident,” Gen. Hossein Salami said in an emotional speech to Iran’s parliament. “I have never been this embarrassed in my entire life. Never.”

The Revolutionary Guard admitted on Saturday that it mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian airliner on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board, shortly after it took off from an airport in Tehran.

The admission came after days of denials by the Iranian government and prompted protests across Iran by Iranians who have called for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to step down.

The shootdown of the airliner happened just hours after Iran launched dozens of rockets at Iraqi bases that house American troops in retaliation for the US killing Qassem Soleimani, a top military commander in Iran.

With Post wires