DUBAI // Iran possesses drones that are far more advanced than the unmanned aircraft Iranian-backed Hizbollah launched into Israeli airspace this month, Iran's defence minister said yesterday.
Iran's military regularly announces defence and engineering developments, though some analysts are sceptical of the reliability of such reports.
Earlier this month, Israel shot down a drone after it flew 55 kilometres into the Jewish state. Lebanese militant group Hizbollah claimed responsibility for the aircraft, saying its parts had been manufactured in Iran and assembled in Lebanon.
The Iranian defence minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said the downed drone did not use his country's latest technology, according to a report from Iran's Mehr news agency yesterday.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran currently possesses unmanned aircraft with technology that is far more advanced than the drone recently sent by Hizbollah forces to fly in the skies of the Zionist regime [Israel]," he said. "Undoubtedly the technology in the [Hizbollah] drone ... was not Iran's latest technology."
Mr Vahidi had earlier said that the drone's launch into Israel was a sign of the Islamic Republic's military capabilities.
In April, Iran announced it had started to build a copy of a US surveillance drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, which was captured last year after it came down near the Afghan border.
Tensions in the region have simmered over Iran's disputed nuclear programme and Israeli threats to bomb its nuclear sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop Iranian nuclear activity the West suspects is meant to develop a weapons capability.
Tehran says it is seeking only civilian nuclear energy.
In a speech on Saturday evening, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to present the country as a defender of peace and security in the Gulf region
"The Iranian nation has never been an aggressor nation, but history has shown that it is a very good defender," Mr Ahmadinejad said.
