It was the first time when Obama administration acknowledged that the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, a radar evading stealth drone, was in Iranian hands.
Acknowledging that its most modern spy plane was in Iranian hands, US President Barack Obama has asked Tehran to return the drone even as a top American official expressed doubts over Iran's claim that it will able to reverse engineer the drone.
"We've asked for it (drone) back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
It was the first time when Obama administration acknowledged that the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, a radar evading stealth drone, was in Iranian hands, which Tehran says it brought down as the plane was flying over its territory.
However, the Iranian Defence Minister Ahmed Vahidi rejected Obama's demand saying that the drone was a property of Iran as it had brought down the spycraft electronically.
The Iranians have said they are close to "reverse engineer" the drone.
The country's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by CNN as saying, "There are people here who can control this spy plane, surely we can analyse this plane too."
Obama, however, shed no further light on the plane's mission or why it failed to return to a base in Afghanistan.
"With respect to the drone inside of Iran, I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters that are classified," he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had expressed doubt's over Iran complying with US demand.
"Given Iran's behavior to date, we do not expect them to comply," Clinton told reporters at a press conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, with whom she discussed Iran.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta voiced skepticism that Iran would manage to gain much of a technological advantage from the aircraft.
"It's a little difficult to know just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts," Panetta told reporters aboard a US military aircraft.
"I don't know the conditions of those parts. I don't know what state they're in."
Asked if Iran may have forced the plane down in a cyber attack, Panetta said: "I don't know".
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