(Reuters) - Iran holds pictures of Israeli bases and other restricted areas obtained from a drone launched into Israeli airspace earlier this month, an Iranian lawmaker was quoted as saying on Monday.
Earlier this month, Israel shot down a drone after it flew 25 miles into the Jewish state. Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the aircraft, saying its parts had been manufactured in Iran and assembled in Lebanon.
The drone transmitted pictures of Israel's "sensitive bases" before it was shot down, said Esmail Kowsari, chair of parliament's defense committee, according to Iran's Mehr news agency. He was speaking to Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam, Mehr reported on Monday.
"These aircraft transmit their pictures online, and right now we possess pictures of restricted areas," Kowsari was quoted as saying.
In Tel Aviv, a senior Israeli military officer, asked whether the drone had been equipped with a camera capable of transmitting photos, said: "To the best of our knowledge, no."
The military recovered wreckage of the aircraft after it was shot down over a forest near the occupied West Bank.
Israeli air space is closely monitored by the military and, except for commercial air corridors, is restricted, with special attention paid to numerous military and security installations.
Israeli threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop Tehran's nuclear program are a flashpoint for tensions in the Middle East. The West suspects the program is designed to develop a nuclear weapons capability, something Tehran steadfastly denies.
Iran's military regularly announces defense and engineering developments, though some analysts are skeptical of the reliability of such reports.
On Sunday Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the downed drone did not represent Iran's latest know-how in drone technology, according to Mehr.
In April, Iran announced it had started to build a copy of a U.S. surveillance drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, captured last year after it came down near the Afghan border.
The United States and Iran are moving forward with secret negotiations, despite denying earlier meetings took place, according to a source highly placed in the Islamic government.
The source, who remains anonymous for security reasons, added that teams from both sides will resume the talks in the coming days with the hope of reaching agreement to announce a breakthrough before the U.S. elections.
The source said the Obama administration seems to need a diplomatic victory before the elections in the wake of the attack in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans because the administration failed to adequately protect the Benghazi consulate.
If President Obama is not re-elected, however, the source contends any agreement reached after the elections will be announced and enforced while he is still in office, once Iran’s supreme leader receives written guarantees from Obama.
The source adds, on a related note, that President Obama chose not to destroy the American, sensitive-technology RQ-170 stealth drone, which was captured by the Iranian forces after it crashed in Iran in December of 2011, because he feared jeopardizing the ongoing secret negotiations.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE: http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/secret-u-s-iranian-meetings-to-continue/
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