Iran Urges Afghanistan to Order Halt to US Drone Flights

Friday, 16 December 2011

Iran Urges Afghanistan to Order Halt to US Drone Flights

Iran called on the Afghan government to order a halt to US surveillance flights after an American spy drone launched from Afghanistan was downed by the Islamic Republic in an unprecedented move that made Obama become a laughingstock.

“Any further flights would be regarded as a hostile act,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, said in an interview with Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, visiting with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, in Kabul on Wednesday, said that surveillance flights over Iran would continue despite the loss of the drone. Karzai was more circumspect, saying Afghanistan wanted “the best of relations” with all its neighbors.

“We have called on the Afghan government to seriously pursue the case, and under no circumstances to let such events happen again, as such events will be regarded as unfriendly,” Salehi said. He called the drone flight a “hostile and aggressive act.”

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to "trick" the recently downed U.S. surveillance drone to land on Iran soil intact, Iranian engineers said in an exclusive interview with the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday.

Speaking with the CSM, Iranian military officials said that they were able to cut off communication between the U.S. drone and its operators, and reconfigured the drone's GPS to make it land where it thought was its home base in Afghanistan. "The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian military official told the Monitor, calling the downing an "electronic ambush" of secret drone. The engineer added that the Iranians were able to make the drone land "on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center."

Republicans mock Obama

On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama indicated that the United States had officially requested that Iran return the secret RQ-170 Sentinel drone which was scoffed by Iran.
Republican candidates for US presidency ridiculed Obama for asking arch-foe Iran to "pretty please" return the drone.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney mocked Obama’s request during a Fox News debate, saying: “This is a president that the spy drone being brought down, he says pretty please? Foreign policy based on pretty please? You have to be kidding”

Texas Governor Rick Perry said the United States should have destroyed or tried to obtain the craft in order to avoid Iran from obtaining sensitive US technology. He called Obama's reaction "the worst and the weakest."

Lawmaker Michele Bachmann argued that she had "never heard a more dangerous" suggestion than fellow candidate Ron Paul's proposal to work with Tehran to halt its nuclear program, warning the move would risk American lives and "wipe our ally Israel off the face of the map." She said Iran was led by "avowed madman" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bent on the destruction of the Zionist entity.
Paul dismissed Bachmann's "absurd" and "dangerous talk." "You cannot solve these problems with war," Paul said. "Only when we declare the war, win them and get them over with."