TEHRAN – Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, an interim Friday prayer leader in Tehran, has said the Strait of Hormuz has always been a cemetery for the aggressors and will continue to be so.

His comments came one day after Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) shot down an intruding American spy drone in the southern coastal province of Hormozgan.

Addressing worshippers in Tehran, Haj Ali Akbari rejected the U.S. government’s claim that the drone was flying in international airspace, Mehr reported.

Following the drone incident, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a series of cataclysmic threats, insisting that the RQ-4 Global Hawk was flying over international waters when it was taken down by an Iranian missile.

However, the GPS coordinates released by Iran put the drone eight miles off the country’s coast, inside the 12 nautical miles from the shore, which is Iran's territorial waters.  

Haj Ali Akbari also said U.S. allies in the region should buy their defense systems from the Islamic Republic, “because Iran’s defense systems have successfully shot down an advanced American drone, while the U.S. defense systems are vulnerable to Yemeni drones.”

The cleric warned the U.S. government against waging a war on Iran, saying, “We have never waged a war and will never do so, but we tell them ‘if you start a war, you won’t be the one finishing it’.”

MH/PA