US intended to inform UK about Israeli stealth drone use over Iran
The US intended to share with the UK that Israel used secret stealth drones which can fly over Iran, leaked top secret US government documents have revealed.
Last Thursday, two highly classified US intelligence documents detailing Israel’s apparent preparations for an attack on Iran were leaked on a Telegram channel called Middle East Spectator. The Pentagon has since confirmed they are real.
Markings on the documents, which have been seen by Middle East Eye, show they were produced by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which describes itself as a “unique combination of intelligence agency and combat support agency”.
The documents record that Israel has been moving missiles and organising training exercises for aircraft, stating that this is "almost certainly for a strike on Iran".
These and some other parts of the documents have markings indicating that they can be shared with the Five Eyes, an alliance between the intelligence agencies of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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However, another piece of intelligence is marked as being for the eyes of US and British intelligence only: that Israel has been using a long-range unmanned surveillance drone which is capable of flying covertly over Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is a “covert” drone named RA-01. It was not publicly known about.
'Israel’s covert UAVs enable long-range, covert surveillance in Iran and throughout the region'
- leaked US classified cable
One of the documents records covert "UAV flight activity at Ramon Airfield [in Israel] from 15 through to 16 October’."
According to the document, the Israeli Air Forces "opened the RA-01 operations hangar screen and the gate to the RA-01 operations area", indicating that an RA-01 airframe "was transiting to or from the operations area" on 15 October.
Meanwhile, the other classified document records that the Israeli military "continued covert UAV operations on 16 October".
It states that "Israel’s covert UAVs enable long-range, covert surveillance in Iran and throughout the region".
This is the first time these stealth drones have been made public and indicates that Israel has the capacity to fly stealth drones over Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, although it is not known whether this has been done.
The US intended to share the details about the drones with Britain but not other members of the Five Eyes, the leaked documents indicate.
However, it is unclear whether the intelligence was shared or not by the time the documents became public.
Britain assisting Israel militarily
After the classified documents were leaked, the Daily Mail quoted a senior UK intelligence source as saying: “The UK has a leading role in providing intelligence support for the whole of the Five Eyes community into the Middle East.
“This intelligence leak shows that the US is using satellites to monitor Israeli military activity and preparations for any counter strike against Iran... Questions must be asked as to what else is compromised.”
One of the documents states: “We cannot definitively predict the scale and scope of a strike on Iran.”
However, it notes: “We have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon.”
Meanwhile, the British government has called for regional de-escalation, although Britain continues to assist Israel militarily.
Plane tracking data shows that Royal Air Force (RAF) surveillance flights occur regularly over Gaza.
The flights take off from a British base in Cyprus; their goal is to help Israel locate Israeli captives held by Hamas.
According to a report by Declassified UK on 12 September, human rights campaigners fear the flight paths are informed by intelligence obtained through torture.
Moreover, British forces were involved in defending Israel from Iran’s missile attack in early October.
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