Posted on 12/12/2011 11:25:50 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
TEHRAN (FNA)- US President Obama is hoping that the Iranian government is in a Christmas mood because he has asked Tehran to send him his Christmas present back.
We are still wondering how he shamelessly asked Tehran to give the US back the stealth drone which had violated the Iranian airspace for espionage.
"We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said following a meeting at the White House with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Obama's comments were the first official confirmation that the United States had asked for the return of the RQ-70 drone that was downed by Iran over a week ago.
In the week since, Pentagon and State Department officials have repeatedly said they were unaware of any efforts by the American government to contact Iran to have the drone returned to the US.
Speaking later in the afternoon US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was doubtful the US would get its "equipment" back.
"Given Iran's behavior to date, we do not expect them to comply," she said during a press conference with her British counterpart.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he doesn't know the condition of the drone and what Iran or other countries might be able to glean about its capabilities.
Panetta said, "It's a little difficult to know just frankly how much they are going to be able to get from having obtained those parts. I don't know the condition of those parts, I don't know exactly what state they're in, so it's a little difficult to tell what they are going to be able to derive from what they have been able to get."
A senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that Iran would not send the drone back.
"This is not only an intelligence victory for us, but a defeat for our enemies," the commander said.
President Obama did not say how US officials asked Iran to return the drone, since there are no diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Most probably, the request was made through the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who represents American interests here in the absence of a US embassy.
Officials say the RQ-70 drone was flying a mission for the CIA over Iran at the time that it was downed by an Iranian cyber attack.
Publicly, American officials have remained tight-lipped about the drone's mission and have not strayed beyond a vague statement issued by coalition military forces in Afghanistan shortly after Iranian state-run media showed the US drone.
Iran announced last Sunday that its defense forces had downed the aircraft through a sophisticated cyber attack.
The drone is the first such loss by the US. US officials have described the loss of the aircraft in Iran as a setback and a fatal blow to the stealth drone program.
The US media revealed on Thursday that Pentagon and the CIA considered several options on how to retrieve or destroy the drone, including sending a cross-border commando raid and delivering an air strike to destroy it.
However all were deemed too risky, since Tehran would consider such an operation an act of war, should it be discovered.
"No one warmed up to the option of recovering it or destroying it because of the potential it could become a larger incident," an unnamed official told the Washington Post on Thursday.
The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations' air defenses undetected. The existence of the aircraft, which is made by Lockheed Martin, has been known since 2009, when a model was photographed at the main US airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, US officials admitted earlier this week.
The aircraft is among the highly sensitive surveillance platform in the CIA's fleet that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses.
Current and former Washington defense officials said even the US military cannot use such a highly sophisticated stealth aircraft as the country is in relatively short supply and is only flown by the CIA.
The Iranian state broadcaster Thursday evening released the first images of the highly advanced US stealth spy drone.
Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh appeared on TV last night to explain how Iranian forces downed the United States' highly advanced radar-evading spy drone last week.
Among the United States' main concerns is that Iran could use an intact aircraft to examine the vulnerabilities in stealth technology and take countermeasures with its air defense systems. Another is that China or other US adversaries could help Iran extract data from the drone that would reveal its flight history, surveillance targets and other capabilities.
The drone was programmed to destroy such data in the event of a malfunction, but it failed to do so. The blow has been so heavy that the US officials do not still want to accept that Iran brought down the plane by a cyber attack. Instead, explanations have focused on potential technical failures. The aircraft cover great distances and depend on satellite links. A lost connection or other malfunction could cause them to turn back home or start automatic explosion.
It’s one thing I give Bush credit for. When they poked us in the eye he laid um out.
This puss will probably start offering them money and apologies.
when I saw on the news last night Obama begging Iran to return the drone it made me sick
He already gave them a hi-tech UAV, what else do they want?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry... and it’s too early in the week to get drunk.
I guess I’ll just have to bang my head against the wall until I can get this mental image out of my brain.
No, Obama is just the sort of arrogant narcissist that can place the whole world in jeopardy just because he perceives he is being made to look like a fool.
A functioning sociopath like Zero might do something very irrational and get millions killed over something like this.
How did we end up with such a dangerous grifter as leader of the free world....heaven help us all.
I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there!
To top it off, I do believe that O. realy believes that he is the next best thing to sliced bread.
We are so screwed. I wonder how much China ends up paying for the billions and billions of R&D dollars US taxpayers funded over the years.
And for good cause.
Did you hear this WUSS whining on the radio last night about "give it back to us!" Oh, the humanity. The Mullahs must be quaking in fear on their prayer carpets.
Jeez, the guy is worse than Jimmy Carter. Gonna get us in a hell of a jam [apologies to Country Joe and the Fish]. How CONVENIENT (for re-election). "Rally behind the President and the Flag, Americans", and all that rot.
First he apologizes and now he begs... Our stance in the international field has been crumbling since he took office. That’s why people around the world (especially in Europe!) absolutely love him.
Notice how the “worldwide opinion of America” polls that we heard endlessly during Bush Administration, we heard a little bit into Obama’s, but then it has been oddly silent now for months upon months, i.e. it seems they are either not issuing these anymore, or they are spiking the results because the image of America has suffered even MORE SO under Obongo.
Well we got Moe as attorney general..
Larry and Curly must be Joint Chiefs of Staff..
Because no doubt about it Shemp is the President..
I remember reading a few weeks ago that the signals sent by the drone weren’t encrypted. If the signals sent to control the plane weren’t encrypted either, then it’s no surprise that our enemies were able to commandeer one.
What possible reason could the mad mullah, SOB’s have for returning the drone? The same reason they had for freeing the hostages when Jimmah was president, none. Elect another Reagan- like stalwart and it’ll be here via fedex priority.
He took full credit for getting bin Laden, like he pulled the trigger himself. The loss of the UAV, however, will somehow be Bush’s fault.
some people want the USA to be taken down a notch or two.
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