HOW A DRONE'S FLIGHT TOOK THE US AND IRAN TO THE BRINK OF WAR
The incident came close to sparking a war, with a planned
retaliatory attack – but with Trump’s top advisers reportedly split, doubts
seemed to set in
The incident that came close to sparking a new war in the
Middle East began late on Wednesday night at the Al Dhafr air base in the
United Arab Emirates, just over 30km south of Abu Dhabi.
The base is home to the UAE’s air force and a fluctuating
number of US warplanes, including Global Hawk drones, used to fly high above
the Persian Gulf looking down on the constant flow of oil tankers and
northwards, sucking up huge quantities of data from Iran.
Trump says he stopped airstrike on
Iran because 150 would have died
The Iranian government says that the Global Hawk which took
off from Al Dhafr on Wednesday night was in “stealth mode”, meaning it had its
transponder turned off.
The Pentagon has not commented on this, but the Global Hawk
is not a stealthy plane. It is the size of a small commercial airliner and
packed with electronic surveillance gadgetry costing $130m, considerably more
than the new US F35 fighter. Its primary defence against being shot down is its
speed and altitude. It can fly at 400mph at 55,000ft.
The Pentagon has not provided an account of the drone’s
route in the early hours of Thursday morning. The version offered by Iran based
on its radar tracking show it making a large loop over UAE territory before
heading northwards into the Persian Gulf, hugging the Emirati coast until it
threaded its way through the strait of Hormuz, which is just 35 miles wide at
its narrowest point.
The Global Hawk flew south-east along the Iranian coast,
keeping outside Iran’s declared 12 miles of territorial waters. Then it turned
back on its tracks to patrol westwards.
This is where the Iranian and US accounts differ. The
Iranian version, in a hand-drawn map with a cutout picture of a Global Hawk
stuck on it, shows the aircraft cutting a corner on its return route so that it
comes inside the Iranian territorial limit.
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