WASHINGTON: Footage of an American aircraft carrier in the Gulf which Iran claimed it shot with a drone in the Gulf appears to be “several years old,” the US Navy has said.
The video was shot by a military drone, Iran’s Tasnim news agency claimed on Sunday in a report on its website, and published some of the imagery from the surveillance flight.
“The footage the Iranians recently released... appears to be several years old, and of the last deployment to the Arabian Gulf by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69),” Lt. Chloe Morgan, US Naval Forces Central Command spokesperson, told AFP in an email.
The video, which could not be independently verified, showed a light blue drone of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards taking off from a desert base near the sea, followed by imagery purportedly from its cameras of an escort ship and then an aircraft carrier with planes parked on the deck.
Tasnim did not identify the vessels or say when the drone footage was shot, but in the video, the number “69” is seen clearly on the aircraft carrier.
The report comes during nearly three weeks after Washington formally declared the Guards a “foreign terrorist organization” and added it to a blacklist.
Iran retaliated swiftly by branding US troops “terrorists.”
The Guards are an ideological military force, operating in parallel to Iran’s regular army.
Its naval arm is tasked with Gulf security, including the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a global shipping route routinely crossed by US forces.
Iran drone video of American carrier appears ‘years old’: US Navy
Iran drone video of American carrier appears ‘years old’: US Navy
- Iranian news agency did not reveal when was the video shot or the vessels that appeared on it
- The drone report was released three weeks after US declared IRGC a terrorist organization
Somali president visits city claimed by breakaway region
MOGADISHU: Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Friday visited a provincial capital claimed by the breakaway region of Somaliland -- the first visit there by a sitting president in over 40 years.
The visit to Las Anod, the administrative capital of the Sool region, comes amid heightened diplomatic tensions in the Horn of Africa after Israel officially recognised Somaliland, drawing strong opposition from Mogadishu.
Mohamud was attending the inauguration of the president of the newly created Northeast State, which became Somalia's sixth federal state in August.
It was the first visit by a Somali president since 1984.
Somalia is a federation of semi-autonomous states, some of which have fraught relations with the central government in Mogadishu.
The Northeast State comprises the regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn, all territories Somaliland claims as integral to its borders.
Somaliland had controlled Las Anod since 2007 but was forced to withdraw in 2023 after violent clashes with Somali forces and pro-Mogadishu militias left scores dead.
Mohamud's visit "is a symbol of strengthening the unity and efforts of the federal government to enforce the territorial unity of the Somali country and its people", the Somali president's office said.
