{"id":39804,"date":"2019-06-20T06:22:43","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T06:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39804"},"modified":"2019-06-20T06:22:43","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T06:22:43","slug":"irans-revolutionary-guard-shoots-down-us-spy-drone-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39804","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shoots down US ‘spy’ drone: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard force said Thursday it shot down a US “spy drone” over its territory, Iranian state television reported.<\/p>\n

“The US-made Global Hawk surveillance drone was brought down” in the country’s southern coastal province of Hormozgan, the Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying by the English-language Press TV.<\/p>\n

“It was shot down when it entered Iran’s airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in the south,” the force’s website said.<\/p>\n

State television did not provide images of the drone.<\/p>\n

The US military denied the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There was no drone over Iranian territory,” Navy\u00a0<\/span>Captain Bill Urban, a US Central Command spokesman, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Urban declined further comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A senior Iranian security official said on Wednesday that Iran would “strongly respond” to any violation of its airspace.<\/p>\n

“Our airspace is our red line and Iran has always responded and will continue to respond strongly to any country that violates our airspace,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security council as saying.<\/p>\n

Thursday’s incident comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States since last year, when President Donald Trump pulled out of a historic 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers and reimposed sanctions on the country.<\/p>\n

The US military has sent forces, including aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers and troops to the Middle East. However, Trump said he does not seek war with Iran.<\/p>\n

Rising tensions<\/h2>\n

Fears of conflict have risen after two oil tankers came under attack a week ago near the Strait of Hormuz – a major\u00a0oil shipping route where one-fifth of the world’s oil passes from the Middle East to world markets.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kuwait emir to visit Iraq over Gulf rift<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The US and its regional allies – Saudi Arabia and the\u00a0United Arab Emirates (UAE) – have<\/span><\/span>\u00a0accused Iran of being behind the series of blasts in the Gulf.<\/p>\n

Tehran has denied involvement and instead suggested Washington could be responsible, using it to justify force against Iran.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday,\u00a0the US Navy said recovered fragments<\/a> from one of two tanker ships bore a “striking resemblance” to mines seen during Iranian military parades.<\/p>\n

Iran has repeatedly denied any involvement in the June explosions, as well as similar blasts on May 12 off the coast of the United Arab Emirates that targeted four oil-carrying vessels.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook headed to the Middle East for meetings in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain to discuss “Iran’s regional aggression”, the State Department said.<\/p>\n

“He will also share additional US intelligence on the range of active threats Iran currently poses to the region,” the department said in a statement.<\/p>\n

In protest at Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions strategy, Iran announced in May it would start enriching uranium at a higher level unless European signatories to the nuclear deal protected its economy from the US sanctions within 60 days.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States has vowed that Iran will never possess nuclear weapons.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard force said Thursday it shot down a US “spy drone” over its territory, Iranian state television reported. “The US-made Global Hawk surveillance drone was brought down” in the country’s southern coastal province of Hormozgan, the Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying by the English-language Press TV. “It was shot down when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}