US confirms military drone shot down by Iranian missile

A US military drone has been shot down by Iranian forces flying over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed the drone was flying in Iranian territory.

However US military said it had been flying in international airspace.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, General Hossein Salami, said the downed drone has sent "a clear message" to the US.

He also said Iran "does not have any intention for war with any country, but we are ready for war".

It comes at a time of heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over its collapsing nuclear deal.

On Monday, the US defence department said it was deploying an additional 1,000 troops to the region in response to "hostile behaviour" by Iranian forces.

The US has also blamed Iran for an attack on two oil tankers near the Gulf of Oman, which Tehran denies.

It was the second time in a month tankers have been targeted in the region.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it shot down the drone on Thursday morning when it entered Iranian airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in southern Iran's Hormozgan province.

Kouhmobarak is around 750 miles south-east of Tehran and close to the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's state-run IRNA news agency identified the drone as an RQ-4 Global Hawk.

But a US military official told Reuters the drone was a US Navy MQ-4C Triton.

It is understood that the Iranians had hit the drone with a surface-to-air missile. A US official said the incident happened over the Strait of Hormuz in international airspace.

The strait is the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 per cent of all global oil moves through.

The attacks come against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the US and Iran following US president Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers a year ago.

Iran recently has quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium and threatened to boost its enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels, trying to pressure Europe for new terms to the 2015 deal.

In recent weeks, the US has sped an aircraft carrier to the Middle East and deployed additional troops to the tens of thousands already in the region.

Mysterious attacks also have targeted oil tankers as Iranian-allied Houthi rebels launched bomb-laden drones into Saudi Arabia.

All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the US and Iran into an open conflict, some 40 years after Tehran's Islamic Revolution.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.