Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.
Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran’s airspace by the U.S. drone was a “hostile act” and warned of a “bigger” response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.
What a surprise. Just because we invade another country’s sovereign airspace they won’t give us our toys back. The nerve!
I was terribly disappointed that the Swedes returned (apparently unopened) the Soviet submarine that awkwardly grounded itself well inside Sweden’s territorial waters. I guess this is really no different. Meanwhile, there appears to be a lot of doubt about why the displayed vehicle is in such pristine condition. Our boys know what happened, the Iranians know what happened, but I suspect we civilians may never know exactly what happened. One has to hope we really didn’t lose our best and brightest RPV. It certainly is in Chinese hands by now (perhaps Russian also).
My goodness, someone in Iran has been studying the playbook of Soviet relations with the West. How did that end, exactly?
NoVA, it appears that despite previous attempts to gain control of these things, someone on the US side decided that the risk of one of these landing in hostile hands was just not very high. As noted before, how did that end, exactly?
I suspect some early retirements after the investigations finish up. I also suspect that once it’s clear who provided the ability to pull this off there will be some display of displeasure to that country, but we may never make the association between the two things. Eventually civilians may know, but they’ll be our kids or grandkids.
Re # 2
NoVA Scout
The famous “whiskey on the rocks” (named for the submarine class) incident did not end with Sweden returning the submarine. It ended with the Soviet Navy invading Swedish territorial waters with surface warships and retrieving their grounded sub. The Swedes lodged a strongly worded protest and recalled their ambassador from Moscow. But there really wasn’t much they could do in practical terms.
During the last decade of the Cold War the Soviets repeatedly violated Swedish territorial waters, usually with submarines, and then denied it of course. Somewhere around 1984-85 an “unidentified” submarine was detected prowling just outside of Sweden’s main naval base. The Swedes apparently had had enough and a destroyer supported by navy helicopters attacked with the modern equivalent to depth charges. The prime minister very publicly announced that foreign submarines in their waters would hence forth be attacked on sight.
The submarine incursions mysteriously stopped, and shortly afterwards the Swedish Prime Minister was assassinated. Not saying there was a connection mind… but the murder remains unsolved to this day.
AO: The Soviets sent a rescue force and hovered around outside the territorial waters of Sweden looking very belligerent. but the Swedes trained shore batteries on the Soviet force, noisily put aircraft on attack footing and held their ground for several days. The Soviet warships backed off, but left some tugs in place very close to the boundary. They (the Swedes) sent an officer on board, inspected logbooks and did a lot of external inspection (detecting radioactive readings that probably indicated nuclear weapons were on board). A Swedish tug finally helped float the sub and allowed it to leave. Obviously, a lot of posturing went on and the Soviets were behaving in their typically boorish way. I suspect the back channels communications were very lively. I think the Swedes should have wrapped up the whole crew temporarily on immigration offenses and spent some quality time poring over the details of the vessel. But they, after many days, did assist it in extricating itself and let it go without close internal inspection. I do not recall that a Soviet force invaded Swedish space to physically release the sub.