UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - The UN Security Council is scheduled to hold a closed-door meeting on Iran on Monday afternoon following a request from the US mission, a UN spokesperson said on Friday.

"At 3:00 p.m. [EST, 7:00 p.m. GMT], the Security Council will meet for closed consultations on the Middle East", the program said.

Earlier on Friday, a diplomatic source said that the mission of the United States to the UN had requested to hold the meeting to discuss the attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and Iran’s downing of a US navy surveillance drone.

On Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said that they shot down a US surveillance drone that had violated Iran’s airspace, an assertion denied by Washington.

Following the incident, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres seen by Sputnik, called on the international community to encourage the US to halt its unlawful and destabilizing actions in the Persian Gulf region.

US President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States had been ready to retaliate with military force over the downed drone, but stopped a strike shortly before it was about to happen as the response would not be "proportionate".

Last week, two oil tankers, the Kokuka Courageous and the Front Altair, were attacked in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz. While the causes of the incident remain unknown, the US has claimed that Iran sabotaged the vessels.

Earlier in the month, the US boosted its military presence in the Persian Gulf in what Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton said was "a clear and unmistakable signal to the Iranian regime that any attack on the interests of the United States or [its] allies will be met with ruthless force".

Over the last year, the relationship between the United States and Iran has suffered beginning after US authorities imposed tough sanctions against key areas of the Iranian economy in order to "change the behavior" of the Islamic republic.

The US also declared the IRGC a terrorist organization, to which Iran responded by recognizing the US Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terrorist group and the United States itself as a "state sponsor of terrorism".