Iran has published the first pictures of the wreckage of a US spy drone which was shot down early Thursday after trespassing into the Iranian airspace. The IRGC Aerospace Force displayed parts of the shot-down drone on Friday noon, contradicting earlier claims by the US that the UAE was flying over international waters, and had not violated the Iranian airspace.
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said Thursday it had shot down the unmanned US aircraft after it breached the country’s airspace. Iran issued “numerous” warnings before shooting down the aircraft, Brigadier General Qader Rahimzadeh, the second-in-command of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base, said on Friday.
The last warning was issued at 3:55 am, ten minutes before the shoot-down, IRGC Aerospace Commander Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said. He made the remarks to reporters on the sidelines of an exhibition held in Tehran to showcase the drone’s wreckage.
US President Donald Trump initially issued a series of cataclysmic threats, insisting that the RQ-4 Global Hawk was flying over international waters when it was taken down by an Iranian missile.
However, the GPS coordinates released by Iran put the drone eight miles off the country’s coast, inside the 12 nautical miles from the shore, which is Iran’s territorial waters. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi earlier told the Swiss envoy that “there are irrefutable evidence about the presence of this drone in Iran’s airspace and even some parts of its wreckage have been retrieved from Iranian territorial waters.
