TEHRAN — Iranian and U.S. officials Tuesday quickly discounted a news report that Iranian warplanes forced a U.S. aircraft to land after it violated Iran’s airspace in recent days.
The Fars News Agency, in a report published Tuesday, said a U.S. plane carrying five high-ranking U.S. military officials and three nonmilitary personnel was forced to land at an unidentified airport by Iranian fighter jets two days ago after crossing into Iranian territory from Turkey without permission.
The report, which has been dismissed by U.S. officials, said the Americans included five “high-ranking generals” aboard a Falcon, a small jet made by the French firm Dassault and typically used by business executives.
The passengers were released and allowed to head to their destination in Afghanistan after they were interrogated and determined to have crossed into Iran’s airspace unintentionally, according to the report.
U.S. military representatives in Washington and the Middle East told news agencies that they had no knowledge of the incident.
“All aircraft in the region are accounted for, and we have no reports of any aircraft landing in Iran,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder in Washington, according to Reuters news agency.
A ranking Iranian official dismissed the report Tuesday as a badly mangled account of a routine incident involving a non-U.S. airplane on a humanitarian mission.
“It was not an American plane,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was a medical rescue plane.”
The plane had given the air traffic controllers the wrong codes and was forced to land, but it was quickly allowed to resume a relief mission to Afghanistan, the official said.
Al-Alam, Iran’s Arab-language television channel, quoted an Iranian military official as saying the plane belonged to a European relief agency and had no U.S. military personnel aboard.
