"'No nation welcomes other countries' spy drones in its territory, and no one sends back the spying equipment and its information back to the country of origin,' said Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's military, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Sunday.
'It makes no difference where this drone originated and which group or country sent it to invade our airspace,' Salami said. 'This was an act of invasion and belligerence.'"
I think Salami makes a valid point. This was an act of invasion and probably won't be getting that drone back...But what do you think? Will the U.S. get its drone back? Does it deserve its drone back? Thoughts?
8 comments:
The U.S. was wrong to invade Afghanistan's space with the drone, and Salami seems very insistent that the drone does not get returned so I do not think the U.S. will be getting it back. I would like to be able to say that this should be considered a warning for the U.S. and it should get its drone back under the condition that if it ever happens again there will be consequences. However, given previous conflicts regarding our presence in that area we are not trusted at all to have spy equipment sent back to us.
The drone was part of an operation to do surveillance on Iran. Iran has every right to keep the drone. The US needs to be more careful with its equipment. The US does (sort of) need to maintain a working drone fleet to keep tabs on Iran, but the US needs to have contingency plans for events like this. Or was asking nicely the contingency plan. Cheney's suggestion of blowing it up as it malfunctioned would have worked if the drone was still over Afghanistan (because the US can do pretty much anything there) but the article was unclear over where exactly it was(over Afghanistan or Iran) when it landed.
Maybe if Lockheed-Martin or whoever made the drone did not have the same secure friends in government, they would have incentives to make stealth drones that are actually stealthy and the US could avoid this mess.
I agree with General Salami and his belief that Iran is not required to return the recon drone, but that doesn't mean doing so would not be in Iran's best interest. If Iran wants to establish good relations with the United States, it would be in their best interest to return the drone and ease some tension between the two countries. Also, this drone was unarmed, and unlike predator drones, it does not have the capability to injure individuals. However, the return seems unlikely, especially with Ahmadinejad at the helm. Historically, Iran's president has been outspoken and even volatile in character, so who knows what craziness will ensue with the drone in his hands.
In an idealistic world, the U.S. would not be covertly surveying other countries and Iran would return any of our lost surveillance equipment. However, this is not an idealistic world. While it would be great to get back this very expensive piece of technology, our leaders should have been willing to face any possible consequences of their decision to spy on Iran.
I also agree that we will likely not be getting the drone back. It was an unauthorized invasion of air space, and countries need to respect agreements that are in place. Also, if the U.S. really did have an important mission or business there, the operation should have been well planned enough to not be interfered with.
I agree that the drone should not be returned to the US. I think that the US has a lot of audacity for even asking for its drone back. The purpose of the drone was to spy on Iran and if they were to give the drone back, they would be helping the US spy on themselves. The US also does not deserve the drone back; like Jamie pointed out, the operation was not well executed enough.
I feel sorry for the people in charge of that drone. Consider this from their point of view, if they allow Salami to hold onto a US spy drone, it might hurt the image of the US as a strong nation and may leak secrets that we did not want anyone else to find out, but if we act out and try to retrieve the drone, we'll be seen as criminals that are violating a nation's sovereignty and rights. I do agree that the US deserves to lose that spy drone, but seeing as how those in charge of that drone are looking at a lose-lose situation, I feel sorry for them. On one hand you lose the drone, on the other you lose the respect of your citizens and other nations. Those in charge have to just let the drone go.
As I stated on the previous post the United States has no right to even ask for their drone back. The government knew the risks of their actions when they sent the drone into enemy air space and do not deserve to get their drone back. If they got the drone back it would be like the United States could click restart on the mission like in a video game, but this is real life. We can make more drones, but can the enemy even reverse engineer a drone from ours if it crashed? I doubt it.
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