Iran to send toy model of captured drone to U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iranian state radio said Tuesday, January 17 that Tehran will give the United States a model of the American surveillance drone captured by the Islamic Republic.

The report said the toy model of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone will be sent to the White House in response to a formal request from Washington last month asking Iran to return the aircraft that went down over Iran in December.

State radio said the model will be one eightieth the size of the original aircraft. The report says the models also will be sold on the Iranian marked for about 70,000 rials, or around $4.

Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama pressed his request that Iran return the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces.

Obama said he would not comment "on intelligence matters that are classified." But, he said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," AP quoted Obama as saying.

The U.S. president spoke following initial reports, which were later confirmed by American officials, that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran.