Iran airs spy footage it (allegedly) took from a captured U.S. drone
AP file photo
Iran says it found the drone in late 2011.
Iran is jumping on the drone news bandwagon today, with an expertly timed release that it claims is decrypted surveillance footage taken from a downed American drone. You may recall that in December 2011, the United States lost a unmanned, unarmed drone somewhere near the border between Iran and Afghanistan, and that the Iranian military said they found the plane and put it on display. (Iran claimed they shot it down, the Pentagon said it was simply lost.) For the last year or so, they've made claims about trying to reverse engineer it, or hack its computer systems, or possibly even sell it to China for spare parts (and intelligence.) Now, the Iranians says that they did crack the American system, and decrypted the camera footage it had shot before it went down.
No one has been able to confirm that claim, even after seeing the footage that was broadcast on Iranian state TV. There is reason to be skeptical, of course, since some experts have doubted all along that Iran ever had the U.S. drone in the first place.