Iran Warns off American U2 Spy Plane

Local Editor

A senior Iranian commander said the country's air defense forces had warned off an American U2 spy plane trying to fly over Iran's borders.

Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili, the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base, said on Thursday the forces warned off the intruding American aircraft in recent days and made them fly away.

The incident, which was not immediately commented on by the Pentagon, happened "in recent days," according to General Farzad Esmaili, as cited by Iranian state television on Friday.

The general didn't disclose any details of the alleged attempted violation of Iranian airspace.

The Lockheed U2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is an American single-jet engine, ultra-high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force. The spy plane can fly at an altitude of 21,000 meters and provide day and night and all-weather intelligence gathering as it carries high-resolution cameras and sensors.

The Iranian Army's Air Defense Base warned off a US radar-evading unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV] in late August which had sought to intrude on Iranian airspace.

The US spy drone had sought to cross into Iran through the eastern border from neighboring Afghanistan. However, it was immediately detected and forced to leave the area after a "timely and stern" warning by the Air Defense Base.

Last week Tehran accused the US of provocatively testing Iranian air defenses by flying within a mile of its border. Iran reportedly threatened to shoot down American surveillance aircraft, should they cross into Iranian airspace, with the Pentagon allegedly wanting to test the Iranians' reaction to a close flyby.

Tehran regularly voices irritation over the US military presence close to its borders.

In August Iranian gunboats intercepted a US destroyer in the Strait of Hormuz, in what Washington described as an "unprofessional maneuver."

In December 2012, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps [IRGC] captured a US ScanEagle drone over the Persian Gulf waters upon its intrusion into the Iranian airspace.

In the same month the previous year, Iran downed a US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft with minimal damage. The drone was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar, near the Afghan border, when it was brought down.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team