Iran has unveiled its own, "indigenous" drone which it said was capable of flying over most of the Middle East, media report. The Witness 129 unmanned drone has a range of 2,000km and can be equipped with bombs and missiles, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps says.

Last year, the Iranian authorities displayed a US drone which they claimed to have brought down electronically. Iran's state aerospace agency then said it was trying to build a copy of the American unmanned aircraft.

Its unveiling followed a major naval exercise in the Gulf by the US and its allies, to which President Ahmadinejad responded with an ambiguous "We have all the defensive means at our disposal and we are ready to defend ourselves."

Source: Voice of Russia