Iran: U.S. needs to come clean on drone

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TEHRAN, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- The U.S. military will have to eventually confirm that one of its unmanned surveillance drones is in Iranian hands, an Iranian military official said.

Brig Gen. Ramezan Sharif, a spokesman for the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, said Thursday that Washington was "humiliated" after his forces captured a drone that allegedly strayed into its airspace.

Iranian officials this week said they were extracting data from the drone, said to be the low-budget Boeing ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy had said military forces accounted for all UAVs in the Persian Gulf region.

The ScanEagle isn't used exclusively by the U.S. military.

Sharif said that "sooner or later" the U.S. military will have to acknowledge the drone Iranian hands belongs to the United States, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reports.

A drone operated by the CIA was captured by the Iranian military last year after it strayed over the border from Afghanistan. It reported has a mechanical malfunction.

Later this month, the Iranian navy plans military drills in the Persian Gulf region. Those drills coincide roughly with plans by the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions with government officials.