But some Telegram channels, including that of Sepah Cyberi, which is affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, accused Israel and its agents inside the county of being behind the attack and warned "experience has shown that Iran will retaliate." "Wait for rogue drones hitting Zionist oil tankers," its posting said. Iran and Israel have been engaged in a shadow war on land, sea, air and in cyberspace for the past three years, with Israel carrying out strikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities and assassinating scientists and a senior military official. During the tenure of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Israel also started targeting Iranian defense and military officials and key infrastructure. Mr. Bennett called it the "octopus doctrine" of striking inside Iran to damage its capacity to arm proxy militias in the region hostile to the Jewish state.

Iran's Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari says the domestic companies and start-ups engaged in developing artificial intelligence technologies have made such progress that are competing with the foreign countries. In a ceremony held in Tehran on Saturday, Sattari unveiled two homegrown AI systems and an artificial intelligence product developed by the local experts and commercialized under the patronage of the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology. In remarks at the event, Sattari highlighted the administration's support for the AI companies and the targeted projects set up for development of artificial intelligence in the country, hoping that Iran would soon enter a competition with the world's top-notch countries in the AI field. "However, it must be mentioned that even at present, a series of products and services provided by the Iranian technological companies active in the artificial intelligence fields can compete with the similar foreign products," the vice president added. A comparison with the advanced countries in the AI arena, such as China, shows that the Iranian-made products developed by the local knowledge-based companies are comparable with the foreign ones, he noted.

Iran on Saturday said it had detained an Iranian-American leader of a little-known, California-based opposition group for allegedly planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others. Iran's Intelligence Ministry also asserted that the detained man, Jamshid Sharmahd of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, planned more attacks around the Islamic Republic amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the United States. Mr. Sharmahd's reported arrest comes as relations between the U.S. and Iran remain inflamed in the wake of President Donald Trump's 2018 decision to withdraw America from the 2015 multinational nuclear deal. In January, a U.S. drone strike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Iran responded by launching a ballistic missile attack on U.S. soldiers in Iraq that injured dozens.

Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, addressing the issue at a military ceremony in Sanandaj, Iran, said the drone had been shot down in Iranian airspace. "We are not going to get engaged in a war with any country, but we are fully prepared for war," Mr. Salami said, according to a translation from Press TV. "Today's incident was a clear sign of this precise message so we are continuing our resistance." The Revolutionary Guards said in a separate statement that the aircraft was an American-made Global Hawk surveillance drone, according to Press TV. American officials said last week that Iran had fired a surface-to-air missile at a drone over the Gulf of Oman, on the same day that two oil tankers were attacked.