‘Lions don’t show their teeth for smiling’: Iran warns

The Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, Mohsen Rezaei, warned US and its allies not to underestimate Iran’s defense power.

“Today, observers and analysts understood that we are not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Americans and their allies should know that lions do not show their teeth for smiling,” former IRGC commander tweeted on Friday in Persian.

The tweet comes as IRGC brought down a US spy drone on Thursday after it had intruded into Iranian airspace and was conducting espionage activities. 

In a statement issued early on Thursday, IRGC said a US-made Global Hawk surveillance drone was brought down by its Air Force near the Kouh-e Mobarak region, which sits in the central district of Jask County, after the aircraft violated Iranian airspace.

Despite US claims that the drone had been flying over international waters, Iran says it has retrieved sections of drone in its own territorial waters where it was shot down. Foreign Minister Zarif said in a tweet hours after the incident that Iran would “take this new aggression to UN & show that the US is lying about international waters.”