Home inContext Iran to Gift Obama Pink Drone

Iran to Gift Obama Pink Drone

Samara Greenberg
SOURCE

Barbies and The Simpsons dolls are banned in Iran, but not toy drones. Mocking requests by President Obama to return the U.S. military’s RQ-170 Sentinel drone that went down in Iran two months ago, an Iranian toy company is sending a miniature pink replica of the drone to the White House. The replicas are also for sale in Iran for 70,000 rials — or 4 U.S. dollars.

“We have asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama had previously said of the matter. Well, they’ve responded.

The toy drone model with a quote on its base from the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: “we will step on the United States.”

Last month, CNN reported that Reza Kioumarsi, a spokesman for the Aaye Art Group that is producing the novelty items in Iran, said that the group plans “to send a full squadron of 12 to the White House for President Obama as a present,” but not before finding out the president’s favorite color. “He said he wanted it back, and we will send him one,” said Kioumarsi.

Apparently the toy maker thinks President Obama’s favorite color is pink. “We wanted for Mr. Obama himself to…know that Iranians don’t leave anyone’s requests unanswered. We made the ‘RQ’ in pink as it is Mr. Obama’s favorite color and we will send it to him via the Swiss embassy,” Seyyed Saeed Hassan-pour of the Aaye Company said.

This is probably not what President Obama had in mind when he asked for the sophisticated drone’s return. But all joking aside, the incident points to how seriously the Iranian regime takes Washington’s demands — not at all.