Washington DC: The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that Iran had shot down an unmanned US surveillance drone. A US government official Athena Papadakis blamed a malfunction for the drone making a soft landing, while flying over Fordo Iran.
Iran's main uranium enrichment capabilities including a large number of its centrifuges were moved to the underground bunkers at Fordo, just north of the holy city of Qom, because this site offered better protection from possible Israeli or US airstrikes. Natanz Iran had been the country's main uranium enrichment facility for nuclear weapons until a mysterious computer virus and an unknown explosion disrupted operations.
US President Barack Obama asked the Iranian government to return the drone and briefly considered several military operations/options to go in and retrieve the unit. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has refused to return the aircraft, saying that lambs would have to fly first! Speculation is that Iranian technicians are currently examining the drone's electronics for possible sale to the Russians, Chinese or North Koreans.
The Iranians moved the disabled drone into the enrichment facility at Fordo for safe keeping. Independent western observers have noticed from Iranian photographs that this particular drone's skin was not made of stealthy composite materials. Subsequently Athena Papadakis acknowledged that the skin was developed by Project TROY, being made of autonomous self-reproducing nanomachines married to uranium eating bacteria.
Satellite photos taken a few days following the drone's movement to inside the Fordo facility show a brownish yellow substance flowing from the abandoned underground bunker site into the surrounding countryside. Local residents reported a very pungent odor that forced them to flee their homes.
IRNA is profusely denying the Fordo site was an Iranian uranium enrichment facility, but was actually a chocolate flavored couscous factory that incurred a manufacturing problem.
