Iran says warned off two US drones during war drills

Warships participate in the closing parade of an Iranian military exercise dubbed ‘Zulfiqar 1400’, in the Gulf of Oman, Iran.

Iran’s military warned off two US drones which overflew waters where it was holding naval war games near the strategic Strait of Hormuz this week, state media reported yesterday. The unmanned aircraft entered “two Iranian air defence identification zones...and changed course after air defence warned them it had decided to intercept them,” the official IRNA news agency said. It gave no date for the incident, which it said involved one MQ-9 Reaper drone and one RQ4+ Global Hawk. But the Zulfiqar 1400 war games began on Sunday and were wrapping up yesterday with a parade of warships, including submarines, state television reported. The exercise extended over an area of more than a million square kilometres in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean beyond. The manoeuvres began just days after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had thwarted a US attempt to seize a tanker carrying Iranian oil in the Sea of Oman. US defence officials rejected that account, saying the Iranians themselves had seized the tanker and taken it to Iranian waters.