IRGC claims seizure of second U.S. underwater drone in Strait of Hormuz: Remus 600 “now in our possession”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced on Sunday that it has seized a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle in the Strait of Hormuz, as Al Jazeera reports citing Iran’s Tasnim agency. According to the statement, the IRGC navy managed to intercept “an advanced drone belonging to the terrorist army of the U.S., which was collecting military and intelligence information in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The vessel was identified as a Remus 600, “an advanced intelligent unmanned submarine,” the WANA agency reported, citing IRGC communiqué no. 17. The operation was carried out “with intelligence capabilities and electronic warfare measures,” while the vessel “is now in our possession” and has been handed to specialists to extract the information stored in it.

In the same statement, the IRGC navy “firmly declares that the Strait of Hormuz is closed” and will act “with force and without mercy” against any vessel passing without permission, the report adds.

This is the second seizure of its kind: in early September Iran captured a U.S. underwater vehicle of the Dive-LD type, for which Tehran recently announced it would begin reverse engineering; Washington then acknowledged the loss but said it was an old model that had malfunctioned. For the new case, the U.S. has not yet given any comment.