Iran Releases Video It Says Proves US Did Not Destroy Drone

Says footage shows the drone was still filming after Washington said it had been downed

Iran has released video footage that it says disproves a claim made by the United States that a US warship downed an Iranian drone near the Gulf.

Iran’s state television on Friday broadcast a video, provided by the country’s Revolutionary Guard, showing aerial views of ships which it said refuted the US assertion.

The television station said a drone captured the footage and that timing notations indicated the pilotless aircraft was still filming after Washington said it had been downed.

The video came shortly after US President Donald Trump said there was “no doubt” the US Navy had brought down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday.

“No doubt about it, no. We shot it down,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Friday.

Trump said the US hopes “for their sake they don’t do anything foolish. If they do they will pay a price like nobody has ever paid a price.”

Earlier on Friday, a senior Trump administration official said Washington would destroy any drones that fly too close to its ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

“If they fly too close to our ships, they’ll continue to be shot down,” the official told reporters at a briefing.

Tehran categorically denied US claims that a drone was brought down, saying all its craft were accounted for and jesting that American forces may have destroyed their own aircraft by mistake.

Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Tehran, said the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division described the footage as “hard evidence”.

“The footage appears to show this drone in the Strait of Hormuz … they monitored [the ship] for three hours,” she said.

“We can see that they managed to get pretty close to the warship, and they said that at no point was there any confrontation between the drone and the USS Boxer … What happened after their surveillance mission was complete was that this drone returned to its base and there was no incident,” Jabbari added.

According to her, Iranian authorities saw the accusation as a “repeat of a type of behaviour towards Iran carried out by the US government”.

“The Revolutionary Guards say the Americans are continuously trying to get the Iranians to react to their provocation,” she said.

On Thursday, Trump accused Iran of “hostile actions” against vessels operating in international waters, saying the US reserves the right to defend itself and that the drone was “immediately destroyed”.

In response, Abbas Araghchi, Iranian deputy foreign minister, dismissed the claim in a Twitter post.

“We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else. I am worried that USS Boxer has shot down their own UAS [Unmanned Aerial System] by mistake!” he wrote on Friday.

Source: Al Jazeera

6 Comments
  1. jm74 says

    Drone could have been destroyed after the video images were sent to Iranian observers. More inclined not to believe the US version but still the possibility exists that the drone was shot down after or during the videos being sent.

    1. David Bedford says

      Americans lie like fish swim.

  2. John C Carleton says

    We can not hit the drone Gunny!

    Well, just gun deck it!
    Write down there you saw it splash!

    Gunny to CO;
    Alright captain, you can tell that bad haired and porn star mounting reality “star” we shot down a drone for him.

    Roger that, medals for the gun crew!

    1. Mary E says

      very good!

  3. JustPassingThrough says

    so the uss boxer did not even see the iranian drone?
    my, my, everyone aboard watching porn hub, i would guess.

  4. David Bedford says

    America will lie if they have to save losing face

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