TEHRAN/MOSCOW – Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saturday that it had captured a foreign unmanned aircraft during a military exercise in southern Iran.
Gen. Hamid Sarkheili, a spokesman for the military exercise, said the guard’s electronic warfare unit spotted signals indicating that foreign drones were trying to enter Iranian airspace. Sarkheili said experts took control of one drone’s navigation system and brought it down near the city of Sirjan, where the military drills began on Saturday.
Sarkheili did not say whether the drone was American.
Iran has claimed to have captured several U.S. drones, including an advanced RQ-170 Sentinel CIA spy drone in December 2011 and at least three ScanEagle aircraft.
The report comes as world powers prepare to meet negotiators from Iran in Kazakhstan on Monday in the hope of curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by advancing a “significant” new offer, despite low expectations of a breakthrough after years of dashed hopes.
Little apparent progress has been made since the last such session of talks in Moscow in June 2012 ended without any breakthrough and the crux of the dispute remains Iran’s insistence on not abandoning uranium enrichment operations.
Western diplomats have said that Iran will be presented with an offer with significant new elements to coax it into a concession and end a stalemate that has lasted almost unchanged since 2002. Diplomats have been tight-lipped about the nature of the offer but it reportedly may involve an easing of sanctions on Iran’s gold and precious metals trading in exchange for the closure of a major uranium enrichment plant.
In related news, Iran said Saturday that 16 locations have been selected as suitable for new nuclear power plants it intends to build to boost its energy production. Iran says it needs 20 large-scale plants to meet its growing electricity needs over the next 15 years. It currently operates a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant at Bushehr, and is planning to build a 360-megawatt nuclear power plant in the southwestern town of Darkhovin.
A statement released by Iran’s atomic energy organization said the sites were chosen in part for their resistance to earthquakes and military airstrikes.
Separately, state TV said the country has discovered new uranium resources in what it characterized as a “big discovery.” As U.N. sanctions ban Iran from importing any nuclear material, it has focused on developing domestic uranium reserves.