Iran drones capture images of US aircraft carriers: Commander Esmaili

A senior Iranian military commander says Iran’s stealth surveillance aircraft photograph US aircraft carriers and other warships cruising the waters off Iran.

Commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili said on Tuesday that the remotely-controlled aerial vehicles operated by the Iranian Army as well as the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) fly over US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and capture images of them.

The Iranian commander dismissed a recent report by the Washington Post which claimed that the CIA had dispatched drones into the skies over Iran and taken photos of Iran’s nuclear sites, saying that such images have indeed been captured by US reconnaissance satellites and not CIA stealth drones.

Brigadier General Esmaili stressed that no unmanned or piloted aircraft has ever been able to violate Iran’s airspace, adding that if any aerial vehicle seeks such an end, its wreckage will be put on public display.

“One such drone sought to infiltrate into Iran, and you witnessed what befell it,” the senior Iranian commander said, in reference to the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft downed with minimum damage by the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit on December 4, 2011.

On December 6, 2011, two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the drone was part of a CIA reconnaissance mission, involving the US intelligence community stationed in Afghanistan.