TEHRAN (AFP/Reuters) - Iran is in possession of data transmitted by an unmanned Hezbollah drone that overflew "restricted" sites and bases in Israel this month, an Iranian lawmaker was quoted as saying on Monday.
The drone "transmitted live data, photographing sensitive Israeli bases," chair of the Iranian parliament's defence commission, Esmaeel Kosari, told Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam television.
"The photos of restricted areas are in Iran's possession," he said in an interview broadcast on Sunday night.
While, a senior officer in Israel's northern command dismissed the Iranian claim, saying, "I don't think there was a camera," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, although he admitted the incident was "still being investigated."
Israel's air force on October 6 shot down the unarmed drone over the Negev desert after it entered the country's airspace from the Mediterranean Sea.
At the time the Israeli military dispelled the notion the drone might have been launched from the Gaza Strip, and was looking into the possibility Hezbollah militants may have dispatched it.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted on October 11 that his group sent the drone over Israel, saying the device was "Iranian built and assembled in Lebanon." "It overflew sensitive and important installations for dozens of kilometres until the enemy spotted it near (the nuclear site) Dimona," Nasrallah said without identifying the installations. Iran confirmed Nasrallah's claim, and scoffed at Israel's air defences.
Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the drone flight "shattered everything that was said about the Iron Dome system" - Israel's air defence shield.
Speaking to Al-Alam on Sunday, Kosari also echoed a claim by Vahidi earlier in the day that Iran had more advanced drone than the one Hezbollah used.
"Iran currently possesses unmanned aircraft which have more advanced technology than the drone that Hezbollah forces recently flew over the Zionist regime's airspace," Vahidi told reporters on Sunday.
In April, Iran announced it had started to build a copy of a US surveillance drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, captured last year after it came down near the Afghan border.
Israeli air space is closely monitored by the military and, except for commercial air corridors, is restricted, with special attention paid to numerous military and security installations.
Israeli threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop Tehran's nuclear program are a flashpoint for tensions in the Middle East. The West suspects the program is designed to develop a nuclear weapons capability, something Tehran steadfastly denies.
Iran regularly boasts about advances in military and scientific fields, but in most cases fails to provide proof they were ever carried out. Western military experts regularly cast doubt on its claims.
Vahidi meanwhile rejected a notion that draconian economic sanctions against Tehran's disputed nuclear programme had affected the military and its advances.
"Unfair Western sanctions have no effect on boosting the defence and deterrent prowess of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.