“We have asked for it back — we’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Mr. Obama said of the vehicle in a short question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House. Mr. Obama appeared along with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of
Iraq, with whom he discussed issues including American concerns about Iran’s influence in the region.
Mr. Obama was answering the question: “And speaking of Iran, are you concerned that it will be able to weaken America’s national security by discovering intelligence from the fallen drone that it captured?”
Mr. Obama did not elaborate on the incident or on Iranian assertions that its forces had captured the drone through a digital attack on the aircraft’s avionics, which they say caused it to land safely inside northern Iran.
American officials have called that account highly unlikely, and attributed the loss of the drone to a technical malfunction. Precisely how the drone, which was managed by C.I.A. controllers in neighboring Afghanistan, ended up on the ground in Iran, apparently nearly intact, remains unclear.
Last Thursday, the Iranian authorities staged an elaborate televised video presentation of what they said was a captured RQ-170 drone with radar-evading technology. The RQ-170 is capable of lingering for hours at 50,000 feet, monitoring developments on the ground; American officials have said that the device was part of a stepped-up effort to monitor suspect nuclear sites in Iran.
On Monday, Iranian military officials were quoted in the state-run press saying that they were busy extracting intelligence data from the drone and were intending to reverse-engineer it to learn how it works.
Iran lodged formal complaints last week about what they called the drone incursion, protesting to both the United Nations Security Council and Switzerland’s ambassador to Tehran, who is responsible for American interests in Iran. The United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations more than 30 years ago.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who began an overseas trip early Monday, described efforts to seek the return of the drone from Iran as "an appropriate request." But he cast doubt on chances that Iran would agree. "I don’t expect that that will happen,” Mr. Panetta said. -Newyork times
