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U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has rejected Iranian media reports that a U.S. Navy MH-60R helicopter crashed in the Red Sea after declaring an emergency, calling them "false reports."
All "military aircraft and personnel across the Middle East are safe and accounted for," CENTCOM said in a post on X, which carried a "fact check" graphic showing the Iranian claims.
The denial comes amid a deadlock in U.S.-Iran efforts to end the seven-month war, with Qatar saying talks are continuing and Iranian officials warning of a "devastating" response to any new attack.
Iran's state broadcaster IRIB said on X on Monday that "an MH-60R helicopter belonging to the U.S. Navy crashed in the Red Sea after declaring emergency code 7700," sharing a Flightradar24 screenshot of a U.S. Navy Seahawk off the Saudi coast near Yanbu.
Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported that the helicopter sent an emergency signal near Yanbu and said radar data showed its altitude at zero meters above sea level, which it said increased the likelihood of a crash.
The screenshot shared by IRIB showed an altitude of 175 feet.
Mediator Qatar said Tuesday that the United States and Iran were still engaged in indirect talks.
"I can confirm that the talks are continuing and the exchange of messages between different parties is continuing via Qatar and its regional partners," Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari's office official Ibrahim Al-Hashmi said.
"The scale of this conflict and the magnitude of the price that the whole world is paying require us to put our best efforts to end this immediately through a negotiable solution," he said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday that talks with the United States were "meaningless" and had only resulted in renewed attacks, according to state media.
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni in Doha on Tuesday to discuss regional de-escalation, the Emiri Diwan said.
Momeni also discussed Iranian pilots that Tehran says were detained by Qatari forces after their aircraft were downed over Qatar in March, and the two sides agreed a technical delegation would hold further talks.
Doha has denied detaining the pilots, saying it recovered the remains of one and handed them to Tehran.
Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Reza Talaei-Nik said any renewed U.S. or Israeli attack would face a "decisive response," and that potential retaliation targets had already been prepared, Fars reported.
He said Iran's production capacity for weapons and ammunition has increased 2.5-fold since the war began on Feb. 28. "Production of some types of weapons has risen more than threefold," he said, adding that defense cooperation with Russia and China has "neither stopped nor declined."
"Our armed forces are more prepared than ever, fingers on the trigger, waiting for any miscalculation by the U.S. or the Zionist regime," said Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament's National Security Commission.
"The response they face will be even more severe and devastating than anything they have seen before," he added.
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