Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denies losing a drone and challenges the United States to prove President Donald Trump’s claims they could find it at the bottom of the sea.
“I officially declare that none of Islamic Iran’s drones have been downed,” Major-General Hossein Salami was quoted as saying on the Guards’ official website.
“If our enemies have any claims on downing Iranian drones, they should show their proof,” he adds.
Yesterday, the commander of American forces in the region said a US warship may have brought down two Iranian drones during a stand-off in the strategic Gulf last week.
Iran, which last month shot down a US Global Hawk drone that it said had ventured into its airspace, has repeatedly denied it lost any of its own unmanned aerial vehicles.
Footage Iran says was taken by one of its drones after the US claimed to have brought it down in the Strait of Hormuz, July 19, 2019 (video screenshot)
In reaction to the Iranian denials, Trump yesterday insisted that a drone had been downed.
“You can see it laying right down on the bottom of that beautiful bed of water,” the US president said in remarks posted on the White House website.
Iran’s defense minister Brigadier-General Amir Hatami responded to Trump this morning by saying the Islamic republic had put on display the wreckage of the US drone it shot down.
“If anyone claims that they have downed one of our drones they must show its (wreckage),” Hatami says according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
— AFP
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