The Iranian military shot down a US drone last week, and now an Iranian general is warning that it will continue to shoot US assets out of the sky if it feels the need to do so.
Iranian forces shot down a US Navy Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS-D) intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft, specifically a RQ-4A Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance drone, with a surface-to-air missile late last Wednesday.
The incident came just days after the Iranian military took a shot at a US MQ-9 Reaper drone and missed.
As Iran repeated its threats, President Donald Trump said Monday he was imposing new sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader and his office, saying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is responsible for Iran’s “hostile conduct.” Iran has called the mounting US sanctions “economic terrorism,” and Trump’s move is likely to ratchet up pressure on the Iranian regime, which could attack oil tankers or drones again.
The US sanctions targeted senior IRGC leaders, whom the US Treasury said were “responsible for downing the US unmanned aircraft.”
While the US claims that the Global Hawk drone was shot down in international airspace, Tehran argues that the aircraft entered its airspace, justifying its aggressive response.
“Our response to anything trespassing Iranian territory is like this,” Brig. Gen. Hajizadeh, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Gorps commander, said Sunday, according to Iranian media. “If such acts of aggression are repeated, our response will also be the same.”
“We don’t embrace war but we are ready to fully defend the country,” he said, “We possess a collection of US drones … If such an aggression is repeated, we will add other US products to complete this collection.”
Iran captured a RQ-170 Sentinel drone in 2011, later reverse-engineering it to develop some of their own unmanned systems.
