August 9, 2019
President Rohani says the shooting down of an American drone last month was personally gratifying for him, as Iranian officials continue day-after-day to talk about the downing of the unarmed drone as a huge accomplishment of the Iranian military and a massive humiliation for the United States.
The United States, meanwhile, has ceased talking about the drone downing and is not citing it as central to the American dispute with Iran. Some news reports have said US officials were not 100 percent certain that the drone had not drifted into Iranian airspace. If they are indeed unsure and unable to prove it was in international airspace when shot down, that would indeed explain the US silence on the issue, which one would otherwise expect a President Trump to harp on constantly.
But Iran does harp on it constantly. Many officials have claimed that the drone was a stealth weapon and its destruction proves how Iran has mastered the technology to defeat stealth. However, that is erroneous. The drone that was shot down is not stealthy at all—which is one reason why the United States did not want it to drift into Iranian airspace.
Rohani boasted August 7 that Iran had a triple accomplishment in destroying the drone. “First, we hit an American drone. Second, we tracked it with an Iranian-made radar. Third, we hit it with our own missile.”
Iran knocked out the drone June 20. So Rohani was still boasting of the feat seven weeks after it happened.
Speaking the same day as Rohani, Brig. Gen. Ramazan Sharif, the military’s spokesman, said the destruction of the drone plus the capture of a British-flagged tanker proved that the world’s supposedly great powers were just empty shells incapable to countering the Islamic Republic.
“The world’s arrogant powers, especially the Americans, had been trying in recent years to promote discouragement among the Iranian people by increasing military threats, but the enemies’ empty power was displayed to the world” by Iran’s recent actions.
Speaking a day earlier, Admiral Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Pasdaran, said the United States had been a “complete loser” in its efforts to confront the “pious, revolutionary jihadi and zealous children of the Iranian nation.”
“They feel much pressure as soon as they come across [the water] and see us. The US Marine accidents have increased very much as a result of the psychological pressures exerted on them. When they enter the Persian Gulf, they say to each other that they have entered hell. And when they leave the Persian Gulf, they say that they have left hell. They are under hard psychological conditions,” Admiral Fadavi said.
“The US will soon conclude that staying in the region is of no benefit to them at all because it has understood in the past few years that they will not gain victory in this fight,” he added.
Bahman Kargar, who chairs the committee running Sacred Defense Week, said knocking down a US drone with an Iranian-made missile astounded all the world’s military powers since it proved that Iran’s scientific capability was much higher than they assumed. Actually, shooting down a slow-moving aircraft that cannot maneuver to evade a missile and that carries no defenses is not very challenging.
In one speech, Rohani said that if the United States attacked Iran it would be “the mother of all wars.” This was a curious allusion, given that is what Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein said in 1991 shortly before the United States attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and defeated them in 100 hours.