I’ll get to stocks later, but I wanted to mention this first. If you recall, in 2011 a top secret drone was “captured” inside of Iran by the people with towels wrapped around their heads. Instead of having the drone destroyed, which is always the preferred course of action during situations like this, Obama elected to let the Iranians have the drone. There is no two ways about it.

Well, BEHOLD (try not to get too mad)

Iran has long claimed it managed to reverse-engineer the RQ-170 Sentinel, seized in December 2011 after it entered Iranian airspace from its eastern border with Afghanistan, and that it’s capable of launching its own production line for the unmanned aircraft.

After initially saying only that a drone had been lost near the Afghan-Iran border, American officials eventually confirmed the Sentinel had been monitoring Iran’s military and nuclear facilities. Washington asked for it back but Iran refused, and instead released photos of Iranian officials studying the aircraft.

The video aired late on Wednesday on Iranian TV shows an aerial view of an airport and a city, said to be a US drone base and Kandahar, Afghanistan. The TV also showed images purported to be the Sentinel landing at a base in eastern Iran but it was unclear if that footage meant to depict the moment of the drone’s seizure.

In addition, the TV also showed images of an Iranian helicopter transporting the drone, as well as its disassembled parts being carried on a trailer.

In another part of the video, the chief of the Revolutionary Guard’s airspace division, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that only after capturing the drone, Iran realised it “belongs to the CIA.”

“We were able to definitively access the data of the drone, once we brought it down,” said Gen Hajizadeh.

He described the Sentinel’s capture as a huge scoop for Iran, saying that at the time, Tehran did not rule out a possible punitive US air strike over the drone.

Iranian officials have accused the US of stepping up its espionage activities against Iran as part of intensified Western efforts to force Tehran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme, a key aspect of its disputed nuclear programme. The US and its allies suspect Iran may be trying to develop atomic weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

In an attempt to embarrass Washington, Iran has claimed to have captured several American drones, most recently in December, when Tehran said it seized a Boeing-designed ScanEagle drone – a less sophisticated aircraft – after it entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf.

US officials said there was no evidence that the latest claims were true.

How generous of our government to bestow space aged technology to people who would love nothing more than to stick a few nu-ku-lar devices inside of our Christmas trees.