Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have shot down a US “spy” drone in the southern province of Hormozgan, the Guards’ news website SepahNews said on Thursday.
State news agency IRNA carried the same report, identifying the drone as an “RQ-4 Global Hawk’.
“It was shot down when it entered Iran’s airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in the south,” the Guards’ website added.
The RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS) can fly at high altitudes for more than 30 hours, gathering near-real-time, high-resolution imagery of large areas of land in all types of weather, maker Northrop Grumman says on its website.
“No US aircraft were operating in Iranian airspace today,” Navy Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the US military’s Central Command, said shortly before midnight on Wednesday.
Urban declined further comment. The US military has in recent days confirmed an attempt by Iran to shoot down a US drone last week as well as a successful shootdown of one on June 6 by Iran-aligned Houthi forces in Yemen.
Tension between Iran and the United States has spiked since last year when President Donald Trump exited a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers and reimposed sanctions on the country.
Concerns about a military confrontation between Iran and the United States have mounted since attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week and four tankers off the United Arab Emirates on May 12, both near the Strait of Hormuz, a major conduit for global oil supplies.
The United States and its regional ally Saudi Arabia have blamed Iran for the incidents. Iran has denied responsibility.
To counter Iran’s threats, the US military has sent forces, including aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers and troops to the Middle East. However, Trump said he does not seek war with Iran.
Iran said last week that it was responsible for the security of the Strait of Hormuz, calling on American forces to exit the Gulf.
In protest at Trump’s “maximum pressure”, in May Tehran said it would start enriching uranium at a higher level unless other European signatories to the deal protected its economy from the US sanctions within 60 days.
President Donald Trump told Iran on Thursday it made a “big mistake” by shooting down a US spy drone, an incident bringing the two countries ever closer to open conflict in the world’s busiest oil shipping lane.
“They made a very big mistake,” Trump told reporters at the White House following the strike near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
“This country will not stand for it, that I can tell you,” said Trump.
But while one of his top Republican allies said the downing of the drone had taken the two countries “one step closer” to war, Trump simultaneously appeared to play down the incident saying it may not have been unintentional.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had brought down the unmanned Global Hawk surveillance aircraft as it was “violating Iranian air space” over the waters of Hormozgan province.
The Pentagon, however, denounced an “unprovoked attack” in international air space, claiming the drone was some 34 kilometers (21 miles) from the nearest point in Iran when it was downed by a surface-to-air missile.
Iran vowed in response to go to the United Nations to prove Washington was “lying.”
Crude oil prices rose more than six percent after the incident which marked a new peak in tensions as Tehran pushes back against surging US diplomatic, economic and military pressure.
Trump has repeatedly said he does not favor war with Iran unless it is to stop the country getting a nuclear weapon — something Iranian leaders insist they are not pursuing.
But critics of the Trump administration say that his policy of “maximum pressure” — including crippling economic sanctions, abandonment of a complex international deal to regulate Iran’s nuclear activities, and deployment of extra sea, air and land forces to the region — make war ever more likely.
The drone downing came as Iran was already accused by Washington of having carried out explosions on oil tankers in the congested Hormuz area. Tehran denies having been behind the attacks but has frequently threatened in the past to block the sea lanes used by shipping to move much of the world’s oil exports.
In Washington, talk of war has become part of the already heated atmosphere as Trump’s reelection fight starts to gain traction.
A key Republican ally of Trump, Senator Lindsey Graham, said the president’s “options are running out.”
Asked if he believe the countries were edging closer to war, he replied: “I think anybody would believe that we’re one step closer.”
“They shot down an American asset well within international waters trying to assess the situation. What are you supposed to do?”
One of Trump’s biggest opponents, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, warned that “there’s no appetite for wanting to go to war in our country.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has close relations with Iran’s leadership, said that US military retaliation against Iran “would be a disaster for the region.”
