‘US drone penetrated 250km into Iran’

The US drone which Iran said it shot down penetrated 250 kilometres inside the Islamic republic’s airspace, state television’s website reported on Friday. In a letter of protest to the United Nations, the government said “the American RQ-170 spy plane violated 250 kilometres inside Iranian airspace before confronting the reaction of Iran’s armed forces,” the website reported. “Provocative and secret actions by the American government against the Islamic republic in recent months” have been on the increase, it charged. It said Tehran had lodged “a strong protest against this violation of international rules by the US government” and warned against any “repetition of such actions.” Iran called for the United Nations to condemn “this violation,” in the letter addressed to the UN secretary general as well as the presidents of the Security Council and General Assembly.
State television also aired footage of what it said was the captured drone, showing what appeared to be an RQ-170 Sentinel aircraft with little visible damage. The Pentagon said American experts were analysing the footage. The footage showed a cream-colored aircraft being examined by two commanders of Tehran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are in charge of the country’s air defences.
Aerospace unit Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh said the drone had been captured through a cyber attack. The RQ-170 Sentinel is a high-altitude stealth reconnaissance drone made by Lockheed Martin whose existence was exposed in 2009 by specialised reviews and later confirmed by the US Air Force in 2010.
Iranian media said on December 4 that the unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down after making an incursion into the airspace of eastern Iran, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Japan on Friday decided to extend its sanctions on Iran after similar moves by other nations to beef up international measures against Tehran’s nuclear programme. The cabinet said it would increase the number of Iranian people and organisations subject to Japanese sanctions, said Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano. The government added 106 organisations, one individual and three Iranian banks to its sanction list, bringing the total number to 267 organisations, 66 individuals and 20 banks.
The move will not add to restrictions on imports of crude oil from the Islamic republic, the fourth-biggest oil supplier to resource-poor Japan. European Union leaders will call for more sanctions against Iran at a summit in Brussels on Friday, in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme, draft conclusions of an EU summit showed. They are not likely make an explicit call yet for an embargo on Iranian crude oil, which EU diplomats have began discussing this month as a way to strengthen Europe’s response to mounting Western concerns that the OPEC producer has worked to design a nuclear weapon. An EU diplomat with knowledge of conclusions prepared for the summit of EU heads of state in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, said governments will reiterate plans to develop new sanctions in the coming weeks. EU leaders will call for preparations of sanctions to take place as “a matter of priority” and for them to be adopted by the next meeting of EU foreign ministers in January, the diplomat said.