specifically about the claim that it was/wasnt over Iran airspace by the opposing sides.
That's pretty much what everyone says about everything that's ever been shot down. Probably dates back to the French-Prussian War at latest when the French sent up all kinds of useless balloons that tended to follow the wind instead of going where they wanted them to. IIRC, at one point during the Siege of Paris the French balloons were of more use to the Prussians because they'd drift over their lines and then the Prussians would interrogate the pilots, about the condition of the city, who obviously wouldn't get back to Paris until later. The Union and Confederate armies quickly stopped messing around with balloons in the American Civil War for much of the same reasons. Austria and France kept dabbling with them because Franz Joseph and Napoleon III were fanboys of them.
The Austrians were arguably the very first to try bombing from balloons, but they ran into a similar problem, at one point they loaded up like a hundred balloons with bombs to drop, and only one managed to do it, the wind blew all the rest back over the Austrians.
I read a whole lot of other sources and the US claims the drone was 17 miles from the Iranian border, the drone in question has a speed of about 320mph. I can see a scenario where the drone crossed over into Iranian space, Iran fired a missile, the drone punched it and got ended outside of Iranian airspace, making both claims technically true (Iran shot while they were in their airspace and the US got hit outside of it).
This is just such a weird piece of escalation to me, why fuck around and risk shit happening that would lead to US soldiers again in the ME against a country backed by Russia. What's the gain here? Was this a failed intimidation tactic or the start of a series of events to lure Iran into a war?
It's not real escalation. Border blasting of shit flying around has been a thing during all modern war. Everyone agrees to best maximize the propaganda value of it and then quietly settle things after. Since it's a drone a lot of the normal stuff is cut down, no bodies to recover, many drones are designed to crash on purpose at some point anyway, somebody gets to test their ability to shoot them down, etc.
The U.S. has much better ways of declaring a provocation requiring combat.
