Post #378 - Eavesdroppers dropping like flies...

This short story appeared on the RIA-Novosti site (12/4/12):

On Tuesday, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said that they'd captured an American drone, the third reported incident involving Iranian forces and American unmanned aircraft in the past 12 months.  The Revolutionary Guard naval commander, Gen. Ali Fadavi, told Iranian state media that the ScanEagle drone was gathering data over the Persian Gulf.  However, he gave no indication of when his forces captured the drone, saying, "The American drone, which was on a reconnaissance flight gathering data over the Persian Gulf in the past few days, was captured by the Guard's naval air defence unit as soon as it entered Iranian airspace.  Such drones usually take off from large warships."

U.S. Navy officials claimed that all their drones are accounted for.

Scaneagle aircraft (Source:  Boeing Corporation)

Last month, the Pentagon said that Iranian forces fired at one of its Predator drones in international airspace.  Irann said the drone violated its airspace.  The incident highlighted continuing tensions between the USA and Iran over the Islamic Republic's disputed nuclear programme, which the West believes is aimed at creating atomic weapons.  Iran says the program is civilian, aimed at energy production.  In December 2011, Iran said it'd captured a CIA spy drone that entered its airspace.  Iran claimed to have extracted top-secret data from the stealth-technology-equipped RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Will it be an incident such as this that becomes the "Sarajevo assassination" that precipitates the next major war?