Does Iran Have Our Drone?

On Strategytalk (the December 18, 2011 show), the notion that Iran might not have our drone was raised. Mostly because the Strategypage people had no authoritative confirmation of what happened.

I admit that I initially wondered if Iran was displaying the real drone. Although I thought it might be because they feared we'd strike so kept the real one in the shadows.

Although I recall the infamous American prisoner the Iraqi insurgents claimed to have during the Iraq War who turned out to be a GI Joe action figure in close up, nobody in the press hinted it might not be real and I am in no position to positively ID if the photos are a drone or not.

If the real drone is still lost but not in Iranian hands, we wouldn't want Iran to know we know. And Iran, probably feverishly also trying to get the drone, would want us to believe they already have it.

What do the Iranians have on display? Is our drone down somewhere in western Afghanistan waiting for us to find it?

It is even possible that Iran wanted us to destroy a fake drone in the hopes of distracting us and taunting us for the mistake--and intimidating us into backing down from any future strike.

If the latter is true, I was perhaps off base in complaining that we did not attack the drone. Although I'd support even a mistaken raid as long as it didn't stop us from doing it again.

UPDATE: That was fast. More here and here. Yeah, the paint job did look odd. But it wasn't enough for me to say it was a fake. Now the theory is that the craft crashed, broke into pieces, and the Iranians put it back together, slapped some paint on it, and claimed their awesome defenses brought it down.

But at least we can rule out the speculation that our administration wisely avoided being sucked into attacking a fake drone that Iran didn't actually have.