Iran warns U.S. after Revolutionary Guard shoots down drone

Crews tow an RQ-4 Global Hawk at Beale Air Force Base in California in June 2015.

By Associated Press

June 19, 2019 8:52 PM PT

Iran’s foreign ministry warned the United States over violating Iranian airspace after the Revolutionary Guard shot down a U.S. drone earlier Thursday.

A ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, was quoted by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency as saying that Iran cannot condone the “illegal trespassing and invading of the country’s skies by any kind of foreign flying object.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it shot down the American drone over Iranian airspace, while U.S. officials say it happened over international airspace in the Strait of Hormuz.

Mousavi expressed Iran’s “strong objection” and added that the “invaders will bear full responsibility.”

The commander of the Revolutionary Guard said the shooting down of the drone sent “a clear message” to America.

Gen. Hossein Salami said Iran does “not have any intention for war with any country, but we are ready for war.”

His speech was carried live on Iranian state television on Thursday.

The reported downing of the RQ-4 Global Hawk comes after the U.S. military previously alleged Iran fired a missile at another drone last week that responded to the attack on two oil tankers near the Gulf of Oman. The U.S. blames Iran for the attack on the ships, which Tehran denies.

The attacks come against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran after President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers a year ago.

Iran recently has quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium and threatened to boost its enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels, trying to pressure Europe for new terms to the 2015 deal.

In recent weeks, the U.S. has sped an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and deployed additional troops to the tens of thousands already in the region. Mysterious attacks also have targeted oil tankers as Iranian-allied Houthi rebels launched bomb-laden drones into Saudi Arabia.

All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict, some 40 years after Tehran’s Islamic Revolution.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it shot down the drone Thursday morning when it entered Iranian airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Kouhmobarak is about 750 miles southeast of Tehran and is close to the Strait of Hormuz.

Capt. Bill Urban, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, declined to comment when asked if an American drone was shot down.

However, he told the Associated Press: “There was no drone over Iranian territory.”