Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) wrote a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday suggesting that recent sightings of unidentified drones over the Garden State may be the work of Iran.
The New Jersey congressman demanded that the president impose flight restrictions over the state and “neutralize” any drone that violates those restrictions, given the “circumstantial evidence that Iran” is responsible.
“We have information that a sea-based Iranian drone mothership is currently missing from port, and that its embarkation timeline would align with the appearances of the New Jersey drones,” Van Drew wrote. “While I remain open to alternate explanations, I have not been presented a single credible, cohesive narrative except for that Iran is controlling these drones from offshore.”
Van Drew, who switched parties and became a Republican in 2020, repeated the claim in an interview on Wednesday with Fox News and said that his information came from confidential “high sources.”
“These drones should be shot down,” he said. “Whether it was some crazy hobbyist that we can’t imagine or whether it is Iran, and I think it very possibly could be, they should be shot down.”
New Jersey residents first started reporting sightings of drones on Nov. 18, and the unidentified objects have now been seen over much of the state, prompting an FBI investigation.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has said that federal and state law enforcement agencies have determined that there is not “any concern for public safety” but described the situation as “frustrating” and said he was taking the matter “deadly seriously.”
Murphy also said he believes that some of the reported sightings were misidentified small aircraft or repeated observations of the same vehicle.
Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, flatly denied Van Drew’s claim that the drones could be Iranian at the U.S. Defense Department’s press conference on Wednesday.
“There is not any truth to that,” she said. “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called ‘mothership’ launching drones towards the United States.”
Singh added that the Pentagon has no evidence that the drones are foreign and said that they are not U.S. military aircraft.
