Iran's military says it has shot down a US reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran, Reuters news agency reports, citing state television.
"Iran's military has shot down an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," an unnamed source has reportedly told Iran's Arabic-language television network.
According to Press TV reports, Iranian authorities managed to seize the unmanned aircraft upon being downed, which they claim received "minimum damage."
The drone, reportedly an RQ-170 sentinel, "is a low observable unmanned aircraft system which the United States Air Force uses to "directly support combatant commander needs for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to locate targets."
According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Iran says it will continue to respond in kind to any drones that have violated the country's airspace, even from outside the country's borders.
The US military has yet to comment on the report.
In July, Iranian officials also claimed a US drone was shot down while flying over the city of Qom, which authorities say was gathering intel on a nearby nuclear facility.
Sunday’s reports of the downed drone come as the conflict between the US and Iran centering around the Islamic republic's alleged nuclear weapons program continue to intensify.
In November, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors passed a resolution urging Iran to provide access to its nuclear facilities to UN experts.
The resolution followed a November 8 IAEA report which claimed Iran had been actively developing weapons.
While Iran has continued to maintain that their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, the US and the European Union have chosen to tighten sanctions on key Iranian industries.
Diplomatic tensions between Iran and the West continued to intensify after dozen's of Iranian students stormed the British embassy in Tehran Tuesday in response to the unilateral imposition of sanctions.
Britain immediately shut down its embassy in Tehran and subsequently closed the Iranian embassy in London on Wedensday, expelling all of its staff.
As the threats of even tighter sanctions loom over the country, Iran’s foreign ministry had responded that any attempts by the West to block oil exports would be met with a doubling of crude oil prices on the global market.
Iran, which received some $56 billion in the first seven months of 2011 from crude oil exports, is the world's third-largest crude exporter and heavily dependent on revenues generated from the trade.
No comments:
Post a Comment