Iran press/Iran news: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif rejected the United States' claim over shooting down one of Iran's drones . "We have no information about having lost the drone today," Zarif told reporters, at the United Nations before a meeting with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, reported Iran Press. Zarf's remarks came after the US President Donald Trump claimed that a US ship has shot down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz.
Furthermore, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi also also rejected the Us claim by his tweet saying that "We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else. I am worried that USS Boxer has shot down their own UAS by mistake!"
Trump has allegedly said that the USS Boxer fired on the drone Thursday, four weeks after Iran shot down a US surveillance drone flying over Iranian waters near the Strait of Hormuz. “The Boxer took defensive action against an Iranian drone, which had closed into a near distance, approximately 1000 yards, ignoring multiple calls to stand down threatening safety of ship and ship’s crew,” he said at the White House on the same day.
The president also claimed that Iran’s drone “was immediately destroyed.” Furthermore, the Pentagon claimed the Iranian drone was within a “threatening range” of the US ship. “At approximately 10 am local time, the amphibious ship USS Boxer was in international waters conducting a planned inbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz,” chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement. “A fixed wing unmanned aerial system (UAS) approached Boxer and closed within a threatening range.The ship took defensive action against the UAS to ensure the safety of the ship and its crew.”
Shortly after Trump's claim, Zarif re-tweeted a map originally posted on June 22 that shows the borders of Iran and the United States. The June 22 tweet came in reaction to Iran's downing of the US drone that had encroached on Iranian airspace.
The incident also happened a few hours after Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had seized a foreign tanker that was smuggling fuel in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz. A local IRGC naval command post published the details of the seizure in a statement on Thursday. Washington has been escalating tensions with Iran under Trump. Leading a signature policy of “maximum pressure,” the US quit a United Nations-ratified nuclear agreement between Iran and six world states. It then proceeded to restore the sanctions that had been lifted under the deal.203
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