Iran defence chief vows firm response to aggression

Iran's defence chief Hossein Dehqan said that the country will give a crushing response to any enemy aggression against its soil, a media report said Monday

"Iran will respond to any aggression, from any aggressor, under any circumstances," Press TV quoted Dehqan as saying Sunday night following reports that Iran had downed an Israeli stealth drone in its airspace.

"This is a serious message from Iran."

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said that it had downed an "Israeli spy drone" near Natanz uranium enrichment site in the central province of Isfahan.

After the Israeli drone was intercepted by IRGC's air defence system, it was targeted by a missile and downed before penetrating the airspace over the Natanz nuclear site, a statement by IRGC said.

Iranian military experts will analyse the remaining parts of the downed drone to extract any data stored on its system, Dehqan was quoted as saying.

Dehqan said that Israel and the US sought to create the impression that they could penetrate the airspace of any country to conduct spying operations.

On Dec 4, 2011, the Iranian military's electronic warfare unit had successfully downed the American RQ-170 reconnaissance and spy drone in the eastern part of Iran with minimal damage.

In May, the IRGC unveiled a domestically produced version of the sophisticated US drone it captured back in 2011. The US RQ-170 Sentinel was reverse-engineered by IRGC experts in about two years.