Drone Drama Uncovers America’s Burgeoning “Cold War” Against Iran

A drama worthy of the Cold War era is playing out between the United States government and Iran after a US drone was downed over that nation last week, a story filled with high-tech secrets and duplicitous espionage with the backdrop of a very real threat of a third American military involvement in the Middle East.

Iran shocked the world at the beginning of the month when they announced that they had shot down a US spy drone  that had been flying in Iranian airspace, allegedly to monitor the country’s nuclear program. Challenged for proof, Iran later publicly paraded the drone itself for a state media and the rest of the world to see, proving beyond a doubt that it had captured important American technology.

After first denying any involvement in the drone incident, US authorities have gradually come to confirm that they did lose a drone over Iran. Despite all observations to the contrary, the official account from the US government and intelligence agencies is that the pricey Lockheed Martin drone was flying for the CIA on a “reconnaissance mission” over western Afghanistan and had “no directive” to fly over Iran.

American operators “lost control” of the drone, officials say, and crashed it upon entering Iranian airspace. They insist that the aircraft was a total loss and that Iran has nothing but a “pile of rubble,” but the images of a fully intact drone being displayed in Iran and the admitted discussion of whether to bomb the wreckage to destroy the equipment portends that US officials are not being entirely forthcoming about the details of the “crash.”

A U.S. stealth drone that crashed in Iran last week was part of a CIA reconnaissance mission which involved both the intelligence community and military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, two U.S. officials confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

A senior U.S. official with direct access to the assessment about what happened to the drone said it was tasked to fly over western Afghanistan and look for insurgent activity, with no directive to either fly into Iran or spy on Iran from Afghan airspace.

A U.S. satellite quickly pinpointed the downed drone, which apparently sustained significant damage, the senior official said.

“The Iranians have a pile of rubble and are trying to figure what they have and what to do with it,” the senior U.S. official said. The drone crashed solely because its guidance system failed, the official said.

Officials confirmed to CNN it was an RQ-170 drone that was lost.

Another U.S. official confirmed that when the drone crashed, the United States briefly considered all potential options for retrieving the aircraft or bombing the wreckage, but those ideas were quickly discarded as impractical.

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U.S. officials are discounting the Iranian claim that they shot the drone down. The United States continues to say the crew of the UAV lost flight control and the drone then entered Iranian airspace.

American officials over the years have been adamant that U.S. assets do not fly over Iranian air space.

The RQ-170 Sentinel is a stealth drone developed by Lockheed Martin for the Air Force to help provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

International consequences for the drone mishap are just beginning to be put in order, with the Iranians miffed, to put it mildly, that American spy planes are being flown over their territory. On Friday Iran formally lodged a complaint with the United Nations Security Council, ostensibly for “propaganda” purposes, to seek justice for the US government’s “hostile and aggressive behavior.”

The incident may come to shine the brightest light yet on  what could conceivably be called “aggressive” operations taken by the United States, mostly covert, against an Iranian regime increasingly seen by Washington foreign policy elites as the greatest threat to US interests and stability in the region. Beginning to move beyond mere rhetoric and passive belligerence via things like international sanctions, the United States has ramped up what could be described as a secret– and very costly —  war against Iran.

Along with Israel, the United States has been accused of launching cyber attacks and other secret offensives against Iranian nuclear facilities. Tensions between the West and Iran have been building over the cyber-offensive that has led to explosions at nuclear sites and, aided by aggressive intelligence gathering via the CIA and British operations, has led to what is being described as assassinations by Israeli agents of top Iranian scientists. The Iranians themselves were accused of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

The Iranian government tolerated, if not organized, a protest march seen as retaliation for Western meddling that forced the United Kingdom to remove its embassy from Tehran last month. The breadth of American covert operations in league with the British and Israelis have many wondering whether “war with Iran” is a thing of the present, not the future.

Two incidents that occurred on Sunday—Iran’s claim of a shoot-down of a U.S. drone, and an explosion outside the British embassy in Bahrain—may have been unrelated. But they appear to add to growing evidence that an escalating covert war by the West is under way against Iran, and that Tehran is retaliating with greater intensity than ever.

Asked whether the United States, in cooperation with Israel, was now engaged in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program that may include the Stuxnet virus, the blowing-up of facilities and the assassination or kidnapping of scientists, one recently retired U.S. official privy to up-to-date intelligence would not deny it.

“It’s safe to say the Israelis are very active,” the official said, adding about U.S. efforts:  “Everything that [GOP presidential candidate] Mitt Romney said we should be doing—tough sanctions, covert action and pressuring the international community  — are all of the things we are actually doing.” Though the activities are classified, a senior Obama administration official also would not deny that such a program was under way. He indicated that the U.S. was not involved in every action, referring to recent alleged explosions at Isfahan and elsewhere. But, he added: “I wouldn’t assume that everything we do is coordinated.”

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In September, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, accused Great Britain, Israel and the U.S. of conducting attacks on him and other Iranian scientists.”Six years ago the intelligence service of the UK began collecting information and data regarding my past, my family, the number of children,” Abbasi-Davani told a news conference at the annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Abbasi-Davani, who was said to have been wounded in 2010 car bomb explosion, said the attacks were carried out by Israel with the “support of the intelligence services of the United States and England.”

Last week, Iranian protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Dominick Chilcott, Britain’s ambassador to Iran, later said the attack occurred  “with the acquiescence and the support of the state.” Then, on Sunday, Bahrain’s interior ministry announced that an explosion occurred inside a minibus parked near the British Embassy. There were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.

A “bricks and mortar” campaign against Iran is also underway. The US military and intelligence agencies have been spying on Iran via the skies “for years,” using bases in Afghanistan to gather intelligence on Iran’s burgeoning nuclear capability and even preparing contingency strategies for a possible ground assault with special forces.

The US campaign of drone missions is so well known, though officially secret, that Iran itself is believed to have had knowledge of it long before this highly public revelation.

Still, U.S. officials said that the U.S. employs a range of capabilities to gather information about Iran, particularly its nuclear program. As a result, officials said this type of mission is probably no surprise to Tehran and therefore is not seen by the U.S. as a diplomatic tipping point.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified information, have said the drone and other stealth craft like it have spied on Iran for years from a U.S. air base in Afghanistan, and other bases in the region.

According to these officials, the U.S. built up the air base in Shindand, Afghanistan, with an eye to keeping a long-term presence there to launch surveillance missions and even special operations missions into Iran if deemed necessary in the future. Such continued use would be predicated on a security arrangement with the government of Afghanistan, after U.S. troops draw down, the officials said.

At this point, while the U.S. has broad contingency plans to put a small special operations team into Iran if needed in the future, U.S. officials said they believe the president has not sanctioned any such action. Multiple officials said there is little appetite for putting U.S. troops in harm’s way inside Iran, such as the Navy lightning commando raid into Pakistan earlier this year to target Osama bin Laden.

Future ramifications aside, the more immediate concern for the US government is how badly their eagerness to launch quasi0military operations against Iran has damaged both their legitimacy in the international community as well as top secret technology that has been heavily utilized by the US military and intelligence agencies in the past decade.

With the Iranians apparently possessing a fully intact drone, experts say there is real danger that scientists there could reverse engineer the RQ-170 and gather sensitive data and technological advancements. While Iran itself may not have use for it, the drone could easily be handed over to the Russians or Chinese for their own use. “There’s not much the U.S. could do about” such a scenario.

One expert called the incident a “Christmas present to our enemies” and should bring into question the entire rationale behind America’s bullish reliance, despite this embarrassment and criticism over civilian casualties, on unmanned aircraft and equipment for both intelligence and offensive capabilities.

No one in the U.S. government has officially confirmed that Iran has captured a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel UAV. But just an hour after Iranian state television aired images purporting to show off its prize, the Air Force’s top uniformed officer raised the specter of a foreign power copying the stealthy jet’s top-secret technology.

“There is the potential for reverse engineering, clearly,” said Air Force Chief Gen. Norton Schwartz. “Ideally, one would want to maintain the American advantage. That certainly is in our minds.”

If the jet “comes into the possession of a sophisticated adversary,” there’s not much the U.S. could do about it, Schwartz said Thursday during a taping of “This Week in Defense News.”

The Iranian broadcast showed apparent footage of a mostly intact RQ-170 put on public display. While the craft showed some damage, it seemed to be in remarkably good shape.

One source said the aircraft in the footage was definitely the Sentinel, a subsonic, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft built by Lockheed Martin. The aircraft appeared to have sustained damage consistent with a wheels-up landing, he said.

The Associated Press quoted a former U.S. official as saying the Pentagon was using the aircraft to keep watch on Iran’s alleged nuclear-weapons facilities.

However, the Pentagon had no official comment on the Iranian video footage.

“We’re not going to add to what we said over the weekend,” said George Little, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Analysts were split over just how damaging the loss of the Sentinel will be.

Dan Goure, an analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., compared it to the Soviet shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane, a tactical and strategic disaster for the U.S.

The capture of the Sentinel calls into question the viability of the very concept of stealthy unmanned aircraft penetrating enemy airspace, Goure said.

“It kind of undermines the whole argument for replacing manned aircraft with unmanned systems,” he said. “Unless you want to use it as a one-way missile.”

The capture of a mostly intact RQ-170 by a hostile power like Iran is “the biggest Christmas present to our enemies in probably a decade, at least,” Goure said