FM Zarif tweets map of US spy drone intrusion into Iranian territory
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has tweeted a map showing US spy drone shot down after its intrusion into Iranian territorial waters on Thursday.
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"For more visual detail on the path, location, and point of impact of the US military drone Iran shot down on Thursday, and of the waters over which it was flying, see these maps and coordinates," Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday.
"There can be no doubt about where the vessel was when it was brought down," Zarif wrote.
The map also showed two yellow squares on the flight path of the doomed drone which indicated Iranian radio warnings sent to the aircraft.
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corpse (IRGC) shot down a US surveillance drone Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz after it did not heed four warning signals, even as the force spared a second spy plane carrying 35 passengers which accompanied the downed aircraft.
Hours after the incident, the US military confirmed that one of its drones had been shot, claiming that the incident took place in international airspace.
Navy Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the US military's Central Command, also alleged that it was "an unprovoked attack.”
On Thursday, Zarif said the country would take the case of US drone encroaching on its territory to the United Nations to prove Washington was lying about the aircraft having been shot down over international waters.
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.
On Friday, Trump claimed he aborted a military strike on Iran because it could have killed 150 people, but many analysts believe the announcement was a face-saving move vis-a-vis a determined Tehran.
Iran said the IRGC shot down the US drone with a Khordad 3 missile defense system, which can detect and track targets 95 miles away and down them at a distance of 30 miles. The system can target enemy aircraft flying as high as 81,000 feet, or roughly 15 miles.
On Friday, the IRGC showed retrieved sections of the US military drone.
