“An unmanned US spy plane flying over the holy city of Qom near the uranium enrichment Fordu site was shot down by the Revolutionary Guards’ air defense units,” MP Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari was quoted as saying by the Youth Journalists Club, affiliated to Iran’s state TV.
“The plane was trying to collect information about the site’s location,” he said, without giving details. He did not say when the incident happened.
The Fordu site, secretly built inside a mountain bunker near Qom, was acknowledged by Iran only after Western intelligence agencies identified it in 2009.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Tuesday appeared to confirm a Reuters story last week that Iran was installing 2 more advanced models of the centrifuges used to refine uranium for large-scale testing at a research site.
In January Iran announced it had shot down 2 unmanned western reconnaissance drone aircraft in the Gulf.
The Pentagon denied that report but acknowledged some spy planes had crashed in the past due to mechanical failure.
Source: Reuters
