An Iranian news agency said on Tuesday that a U.S. military aircraft had unintentionally violated Iranian airspace and been forced to land in Iran, but later allowed to leave.The report goes on to claim that the aircraft involved was a Falcon, which would refer to the F-16 fighter aircraft, which is generally a one-seater, so that the part about how and why five US military officials would be at an Iranian airport being questioned over the incident makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
The semi-official Fars News Agency did not say when the incident happened or give a source for the report, which comes at a time of tension between Tehran and Washington over Iran's disputed nuclear programme.
The news agency said five senior U.S. military officials had been interrogated at an Iranian airport and released a day later after it became clear the plane had not entered Iranian airspace intentionally.
"After it became clear that they unintentionally entered Iran's air space and their destination was Afghanistan, they were allowed to leave Iran for Afghanistan," Fars said.
The only way that this could even remotely make sense is if they're referring to a Dassault business jet. Dassault makes a Falcon business jet, but that's not a warplane.
UPDATE:
How exactly could the Iranians make this mistake? The plane was Hungarian, not American, and there were no Americans on board. The media is an absolute joke, Iran's state run media doubly so.
UPDATE:
Iran's claims were likely intended to cause panic in international markets at a time when the markets are already jittery and would drop on even the rumor of bad news. A serious incident between the US and Iran would qualify. Of course, that wasn't the case, and this incident apparently occurred September 30.
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