Unidentified “spy drone” crashes in western Iran

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 27 - An unmanned plane crashed after hitting a mountain in western Iran, according to government officials in the Iranian capital.

The plane crashed in the Alashtar Mountains in Lorestan Province, Ali-Asghar Ahmadi, the Deputy Minister of the Interior for security affairs, told reporters on Saturday. “We have received a report about an unmanned plane crashing into the mountains in this region”, Ahmadi said, without any further elaboration.

Ahmadi did not identify the origin of the drone or its intended mission, diverting questions to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Supreme National Security Council.

Officials in the two security agencies were not available for comment, but an official in the governor’s office in Lorestan Province, contacted by telephone, said the Revolutionary Guards units had secured the site of the crash where “the spy drone hit a mountain”.

The nearest town to the site of the crash is Alashtar with a population of 70,000, which lies 50 kilometres north of the provincial centre Khorram-Abad.

In February, an explosion which turned out to be a dam blast in southern Iran sent jitters through global financial markets amid speculation that the Iran’s nuclear reactor in Bushehr had come under attack. Iran's Arabic-language al-Alam satellite channel issued the first reports of an explosion in Deylam, about 100 miles from the Bushehr plant, citing witnesses who said they had seen an aircraft fire a missile. The panic was in part fuelled by confirmation in Tehran the previous day that unmanned U.S. spy planes were flying surveillance missions over nuclear facilities.

News of the explosion caused international stock markets to plunge, while oil prices shot up by nearly a dollar before eventually settling down.