US President Barack Obama should apologise for sending an unmanned spy plane into Iranian territory rather than asking for it back after it was seized, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. Iran announced on December 4 it had downed the spy plane in the eastern part of the country, near Afghanistan. It has since shown the plane on television and said it is close to cracking its technological secrets. On Monday, Obama told a news conference: “We have asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond.” Iranian officials had already said they would not return the drone. “It seems that (Obama) has forgotten that our air space was violated, a spying operation conducted and international law trampled,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference.
“Instead of an official apology for the offence they have committed, he is raising such a demand. America must know that the violation of Iran’s air space can endanger world peace and security.” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the official IRNA news agency: “The US spy drone is the property of Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran will decide what it wants to do in this regard.” Parliament issued a resolution calling the drone incursion “evidence of international terrorism and a blatant violation of international law by the aggressor America,” and said Iran might seek reparations from Washington. Iran has already complained to the UN Security Council about the incursion, calling for action to “put an end to these dangerous and unlawful acts. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan initially said the plane may have been an unarmed US reconnaissance drone that went missing during a mission over western Afghanistan. But a person familiar with the situation has since told Reuters in Washington that the drone was on a surveillance mission over Iran.
Iran’s judiciary announced on Tuesday it had issued indictments against 15 unidentified people held on suspicion of spying for the United States and Israel, the official IRNA news agency reported. Republican presidential candidates in the United States have upped rhetoric on a possible military strike against Iran, something Israel says it may carry out as a last resort to stop the Islamic Republic getting the bomb. Meanwhile, former vice president Dick Cheney criticised Obama, saying the president should have ordered an air strike to quickly destroy the drone to prevent Iran from examining the high-tech aircraft. “The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney said an interview with CNN. “You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick air strike. And, in effect, make it impossible for them to benefit from having captured that drone,” Cheney told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” program.
US House-Senate panel agrees on new Iran sanctions: Leaders of a US House and Senate negotiating panel said they had agreed to compromise legislation imposing new sanctions that target Iran’s central bank, despite the Obama administration’s misgivings over the measure. They said they hoped to pass it this week. The lawmakers, the leaders of armed services committees from both political parties, said they had made some changes sought by the administration. Still, Levin said, “we have written this language so it’s tough. We want it to be tough” in an attempt to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program. He said he hoped President Barack Obama would sign it into law once it clears the House and Senate, which it is expected to do later this week.
