September 16, 2014: Iran appears to have been trying to get a media story going about Israeli UAVs being used over Iran and Iraq. Three times in August 2014 there were stories about Israeli Hermes UAVs crashing in Iraq, Iran and Gaza. The Iraq story was reported by a Hezbollah satellite news channel, the Iranian crash was reported by Iran and the Gaza crash was reported by Hamas (which receives regular supplies of Iranian cash and weapons). Hezbollah is also on the Iranian payroll, but is more public about it. The one thing all these events had in common was that in each of them it was claimed there was physical evidence of a Hermes type UAV crashing and that the evidence would be presented. But the evidence never was made public and the three stories faded away, perhaps because they never gained any traction. Iran was also embarrassed when informed that the Hermes could not reach Iran from Israel. Iran then blamed other countries in the area for working with the Israelis. That line was quickly abandoned because most Moslems don’t believe any Moslem would support Israel.

It’s unclear why Iran chose now to try and get this story going. It is no secret that Israel keeps a close eye on Iran, especially the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The “Hermes” UAV brought down in Iran was allegedly near a uranium enrichment facility. Israel has apparently used UAVs to spy on Iran, but Israel also has spy satellites that can do the same job, although not in as much detail as with the more powerful cameras carried by UAVs.

Then again, they may be about Azerbaijan, which uses Hermes UAVs and other Israeli equipment. This annoys the Iranians a great deal and there has been something of an undeclared war going on between Azerbaijan and Iran. In any event internal Iranian politics can get very murky and confusing, what with all the “more Islamic than thou” posturing among the various factions of what is, for all practical purposes, a religious dictatorship that is often at war with itself.