US Navy admits Iranian drone footage of aircraft carrier is genuine by saying it’s ‘years old’

The US Navy has claimed that close-up footage released by Iran of an American aircraft carrier operating in the Persian gulf is “several years old,” tacitly acknowledging that the audaciously captured images are genuine.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps released the up-close-and-personal video of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower on Sunday. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that the footage was captured using a military drone.

“The footage the Iranians recently released... appears to be several years old, and of the last deployment to the Arabian Gulf by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69),” a spokesperson for the US Naval Forces Central Command told AFP.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was last deployed in the gulf in 2016 as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the intervention targeting the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.

In the video the drone gets so close to the ship that the numbers on the wings of the fighter jets and reconnaissance planes can clearly be read.

The Tasnim news report suggested that the release of the drone footage was a response to the US designating the Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization” earlier this month. It is the only time the US has given another nation's military this label. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani responded by saying that the US was the “leader of world terrorism.”

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