TEHRAN, IRAN.- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, that its air defense units shot down two US LUCAS one-way attack drones over Bandar Khamir, in the southern province of Hormozgan near the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Fars News Agency. The IRGC's Hormozgan public relations office said the drones were detected, tracked and destroyed by air defense units of the Imam Sajjad Corps, operating as part of Iran's integrated air defense network. There was no immediate comment from Washington on the Iranian claim.
The LUCAS, short for Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, is a one-way attack drone whose design is a copy of Iran's HESA Shahed-136, according to Iranian state television Press TV. It was not the first such claim: the IRGC said on Monday that it had downed two US MQM-170 reconnaissance drones south of Qeshm Island using electronic warfare, bringing the number of aircraft of that type reportedly captured by Iranian forces to four, and Iranian media had already reported a LUCAS shot down over Bandar Abbas in October and another by the Army in July. The claims have not been independently verified, and the US military has previously rejected at least one Iranian drone account.
Five explosions on Qeshm and a US president downplaying the strikes
The new claim came hours after Iran's official IRNA news agency reported at least five explosions on Qeshm Island, near the strategically important Strait of Hormuz, with blasts also heard in the nearby port city of Bandar Lengeh. Iranian authorities have not established the cause of those blasts, but US officials confirmed to US media that American forces carried out "defensive" strikes against Iranian targets in the strait, including a strike on a newly completed Iranian anti-aircraft installation that Washington had monitored for more than two months.
President Donald Trump, speaking on Tuesday, said he was "not looking to kill lots of people" in Iran and described the overnight strikes as "minor, it wasn't war." The exchange follows the series of secret US strikes on Qeshm Island reported by The Wall Street Journal, which US officials described as limited, with no immediate plans to escalate. On the diplomatic front, Iran's chief negotiator Mohamad Baqer Qalibaf said on Tuesday that the ball is in the United States' court to avoid a new war, while Iran's top security chief Mohsen Rezaei said Washington must "fully and explicitly" address Tehran's seven conditions before the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened — the waterway through which a large share of the world's seaborne oil passes.
Read more on The Wire Post: Donald Trump Secretly Struck Iran's Qeshm Island in a Series of Hidden Strikes as Tehran Says It Can Reopen the Strait of Hormuz Within Two Days, Donald Trump Strikes Iran's Qeshm Island and Donald Trump Confirms US Strike on Iran.
Sources: Fars via ANews, Press TV, Tasnim via Anadolu, IRNA, Al Jazeera live blog, The Wall Street Journal via US media, November 3, 2026.