Iran Bluffs About U.S. Surveillance Drone

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Dec.10, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

           Claiming to have broken the U.S. code from a stray bat-shaped U.S. surveillance drone captured Dec. 4, 2011, the Iranian government continues to bluff about its military sophistication.  When Hamas boasted about firing a thousand missiles with Iranian components at Israel last month, they had a hit rate of less than one percent.  Last year at this time, Iran boasted about cracking the captured drone’s top secret telemetry codes, simply lulling the surveillance vehicle to a safe landing in Iran.  Iran now makes the bogus claim that it’s cracked the drone’s secure guidance software.  “All the intelligence in this drone has been completely decoded and extracted and we know each and every step its has taken,” said Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the aerospace division of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards, according to the English language semi-official Fars New Agency.

            Iranian officials insisted last year they intercepted the U.S. drones’ telemetry signals and coaxed it out the sky to a safe landing on Iranian soil.  Pentagon officials denied any such thing, indicating that the drone drifted out of Afghanistan airspace and floated down onto Iranian soil on its own.  However improbable both stories seem, the Iranian military faces serious challenges with the current U.N. sanctions routine, preventing them from developing more sophisticated weaponry.  U.N.’s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency with U.S.-backing has pressured Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program, believing Iranian nuclear experts to be working on weapons grade fuel.  Made by Lockheed Martin, the RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned surveillance drone lost contact with CIA flight operations in late November 2011 and turned up on display in Tehran.

            When Iran paraded the RQ-170 to the media in Tehran Dec. 8, 2011, it looked completely intact, with no signs of a crash landing.  Iranian officials said the drone’s computer brain was intact, something that was supposed to self-destruct on malfunctioning.  Pentagon officials in 2011 dismissed Iranian reports but it now looks like the RQ-170 was not an Iranian artifact created in a TV studio.  Judging by the lack of success of Iranian-built missile guidance systems sold to Hamas in Gaza, the Iranians look like they’re blowing more smoke.  With all the saber-rattling about Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian military exaggerates its military prowess to stave off its enemies, especially the U.S. and Israel that have been threatening preemptive air strikes against Iran’s underground enrichment sites.  Iran has warned Israel and U.S. against any preemptive strikes.

              Iran’s technology was showcased in October when its own drone sold to Iran’s Lebanese-backed terror group Hezbollah was downed by Israel.  “Calling it “an old product of Iran,” said Gen. Hajizadeh, assuring that Iran’s current drone models meet or exceed U.S. specs.  Hajizedeh insisted that the downed drone wasn’t spying on Iran’s nuclear facilities but was used “as an excuse for hostile practices.”  With the U.S. considering intervening in Syrian, Iranians feel emboldened to take more aggressive measures, believing the U.S. is too tied up elsewhere to intervene in Iran.  Iranian officials shouldn’t underestimate President Barack Obama’s options, whether or not the U.S. acts in Syria.  There’s still unfinished business in Tehran.  No one at the State Department forgets the Nov. 4, 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

            Like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei like to grossly exaggerate their military prowess.  Hussein refused to allow Mohammed ElBaradei’s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to enter Iraq in the two years before the March 20, 2003 Iraq War.  In the wake of Sept. 11, former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney had little trust in Saddam’s refusals to allow U.N. weapons inspectors.  While things are different now, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister are losing patience with Iran.  Whether or not Iran’s a close to producing weapons grade uranium, the U.S. and Israel can’t afford to wait it out until Iran submits to U.N. weapons inspections.  Security experts doubt that anything contained within the computer brain of the RQ-170 would have any strategic value to Iran.

            Huffing-and-puffing, Iran continues to threaten U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, bloviating about their military prowess.  Like the late Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei like to bluff their enemies into submission.  While the U.S. and Israel have limited patience, there’s no credible evidence that Iran is in any way close to a usable nuclear weapon, both in terms of sufficient weapons grade fuel or a usable A-bomb design or warhead.  Choosing to go to war against Iran should be about liberating the Iranian people from its current fascist theocracy.  Whatever the Iranians got from the wayward drone, it gives them almost zero military value.  Parading around the former CIA drone gives Tehran something to crow about.  Iranian military mouthpieces, like Gen. Hajizadeh, serve nothing more than than pernicious propaganda, intimidating the West into backing down.

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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