Iran confirms clash with US drone, claims it was in Iranian airspace (+video)

Iran's official PressTV reported that the "Defenders of Velayat Skies 4" maneuver would cover 850,000 square kilometers in eastern Iran, and would "display the full strength and preparedness of Iran's air defense forces to defend the Islamic Republic's eastern borders."

Pentagon: 'no precedence for this'

Pentagon spokesman George Little said the Iranian planes fired at least twice at the slow-moving drone and pursued it for several miles as it moved away. He said at no point did the Predator enter Iranian airspace.

"There is absolutely no precedence for this. This is the first time that a [drone] has been fired upon to our knowledge by Iranian aircraft," said Mr. Little.

When he was asked if the Iranians might have fired only warning shots, Little replied: "Our working assumption is that they fired to take it down. You'll have to ask Iranians why they engaged in this action."

While both sides have engaged in heated rhetoric over Iran's controversial nuclear program, neither announced the drone incident last week until CNN broke the news on Thursday.

CNN reported a senior US official saying: "At least two bursts of gunfire came from the Su-25s' cannons. The drone started to move away but the Iranian aircraft chased it, doing aerial loops around it before breaking away and returning to Iran."

At a press briefing Thursday, Little said the Pentagon considered media reports "an unauthorized disclosure of classified information," and that the US military did not announce the Nov. 1 incident because "we routinely do not advertise our classified surveillance missions."

No independent verification

There was no way to independently confirm the Pentagon's account, and correct facts have not always been initially forthcoming in past US-Iran incidents in the Persian Gulf.

The Pentagon announced in January 2008, for example, that several of its warships had been harassed by five armed Iranian speed boats. It released a video of the incident, in which a voice was heard to say: "I am coming at you. You will explode...."

The Pentagon first announced that US officers – after seeing suspicious packages dropped into the water – were on the verge of opening fire; one ship commander later denied that.

Likewise, the source of the "voice" was never confirmed to have come from the Iranian boats, though its presence was used to heighten the drama of media reports.

Two decades earlier, the US Navy was found to have covered up critical details of the 1988 shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian commercial jet over the Persian Gulf, which killed all 290 on board.

A Newsweek investigation found the official Pentagon investigation to be a "pastiche of omission, half-truths, and outright deceptions" that amounted to a "cover-up approved at the top."

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