Did Iran shoot down US Air Force E-3G plane near Strait of Hormuz?
Reports of a USAF E-3G AWACS disappearing over the Strait of Hormuz remain unverified as Trump says Iran is not ready for a peace deal
As a peace deal between the US and Iran remains in the balance, reports about a US Air Force aircraft purportedly going missing over the Strait of Hormuz have triggered concern.
Early Friday, a report from the flight-tracking platform FlightRadar24 went viral on social media. It purportedly showed a US Air Force E-3G Sentry aircraft disappearing from the radar after transmitting an emergency code. The location of the aircraft was near the Strait of Hormuz.
The FlightRadar24 data and the emergency code 7700 transmission were covered by Russian broadcaster RT News. It showed that the plane was at an altitude of 19,275 feet with a ground speed of 852 km/h when it activated the emergency transponder code. Shortly after, the flight allegedly went off the radar.
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The US Central Command has not confirmed if any E-3G Sentry was indeed shot down. Nonetheless, speculation went wild on social media that the aircraft was shot down, possibly by Iran, amid the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz.
The Boeing E-3G Sentry AWACS aircraft is one of the US Air Force's prized assets. Bought for over $270 million each in 1998, the USAF has 31 of them in its inventory. It is used as a flying command-and-control centre across different US Air Force bases.
Trump says Iran 'not ready' for deal
President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran "would love to make a deal" with the US but "they are not ready for it." He told reporters that the US is currently observing how the talks with Iran develop in the coming days, indicating that there is still no clear end to the conflict in sight. The 79-year-old asserted that the US has "total control" over the Strait of Hormuz.
"It just means that we're seeing what happens," Trump said. "We have total control of that entire region having to do with the Strait of Hormuz, and that means well into it, the land areas. So, they would love to make a deal, but they're not ready to make the right deal, in my opinion."
Also read: US threatens 'toughest sanctions in history' on Iran; oil prices surge as Trump warns of 'economic warfare'
Additionally, Trump also threatened "unprecedented levels" of economic sanctions on Iran. He threatened sanctions on Iran's partners and promised to bring about what he described as an "Economic D-Day" in the country.
