“This is exactly and undoubtedly an act of aerial terrorism,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said in condemnation of the US interception of an Iranian Airbus A-310 passenger jet that was flying over Syrian airspace last week.

In a strongly worded televised speech July 29, Rouhani added that the United States must be treated as a “terrorist state” because it “harassed passengers” on board the plane. He urged a reaction from the UN Security Council and the International Civil Aviation Organization against the “mischievous” and “unacceptable” move.

In its own version of the events, the US Central Command has said two of its F-15 fighter jets conducted a “standard visual inspection” from a safe distance of the plane that belonged to Mahan Air, an airline linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Minutes into the incident, Iran’s state television reported that several passengers on the Beirut-bound flight had been injured as the pilot had to drop altitude by conducting a sudden safety nosedive to avoid the two warplanes.

Starting in 2011, the US Treasury has slapped Mahan Air with multiple sanctions over its perceived secret operations assisting the IRGC with weapons smuggling and troops deployment to Syria, a charge that the airline has repeatedly denied.