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Iran’s military shooed away a US Navy EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft on Sunday after it entered airspace over the Islamic Republic’s territorial waters.
“After the US Navy’s EP-3E aircraft entered Iran’s territorial waters, vigilant Navy commanders sent a warning to prevent the aircraft from entering the country’s airspace without authorization,” the Iranian Navy said in a statement.
The Navy’s public relations department indicated that the alertness of its forces blocked the unauthorized entry of the “terrorist” plane into Iran’s airspace, with the US aircraft said to have heeded the warning and returned to international waters.
The Pentagon has yet to comment on the incident.
Sunday’s incident isn’t the first of its kind, with Iran’s military regularly picking up EP-3E spy planes skimming provocatively close to Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to maximize intelligence collection.
The Islamic Republic has not shied away from making clear to Washington that it will target American aircraft straying into its airspace. In June 2019, Revolutionary Guards air defense troops shot down a US RQ-4 Global Hawk drone in the Strait of Hormuz using a cutting-edge domestically-made surface-to-air missile system, bringing the two countries to the brink of war. Iran later revealed that its forces had refrained from firing on a manned Boeing P-8 Poseidon with dozens of airmen onboard which was operating near the Global Hawk to prevent a further escalation. Iran then collected the wreckage of the US drone, put it back together and put it on display in Tehran.
Iran’s military has warned that it will not tolerate US aircraft, whether they be manned or unmanned spy craft of nuclear-capable bombers, from intruding on its airspace. In 2020, a senior Iranian air defense commander warned that the country’s airspace was one of Iran’s “red lines,” and that “as enemies have experienced in the past…the smallest violation will be met with the air defense forces’ crushing and fiery response.”
Iran has one of the most capable air defense networks in the Middle East, with a dense system of ground and sea-based SAM missiles complemented by sophisticated detection capabilities, including 3D phased-array radars, large early warning radars with ranges of between 400 and 800 km, and an active space surveillance program.