The UAV that crashed in Iran cannot be Armenian

Today, in the morning of October 13, various Iranian sources reported about an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that crashed in the territory of Iran. The news was later officially confirmed by the IRNA Iranian state news agency. According to the agency, it crashed in the area of Ozan Tape village of Parsabad-Moghan county in Ardebil Province of Iran, which is located tens of kilometers away from the Artsakh-Azerbaijani border, to the east.

IRNA’s Persian-language article states that according to local sources, the UAV may belong to either the Azerbaijani or Armenian armed forces, which have been conducting military operations near the northern border of Iran for two weeks. And the very title of the English-language article published by the same agency says “Azerbaijani or Armenian drone crashes in northwestern Iran.”

Nevertheless, this UAV cannot belong to the Armenian side. It is an Israeli-made Harop “kamikaze drone”. Below we present the photo of “Harop” posted on the website of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which produces that UAV. You can see from the photo that the crashed UAV is “Harop” type. The website razm.info has also written about the UAV being “Harop” type.

And as it is known, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh do not have any Israeli-made UAVs. All UAVs of the Armenian Armed Forces are of domestic production.

By the way, recently the same “Harop” type UAV was presented as Armenian by the advisor to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmat Hajiyev. He claimed on his Twitter microblog that Azerbaijan’s Air Defense had shot down Armenia’s “kamikaze” UAV, and attached several photos of the same “Harop”.

The use of “Harop” by Azerbaijan in the ongoing war was approved by Hajiyev himself, who praised their high efficiency. Azerbaijan used this UAV during the April 2016 war as well.

It should be reminded that the Fact Investigation Platform wrote on September 26 about active flights of cargo planes between Israel, Turkey and Azerbaijan. After the start of hostilities, cargo planes continue to fly between Israel and Azerbaijan, in all likelihood, transporting weapons and ammunition.

Hovhannes Nazaretyan