Gov. Rick Perry, a contender for the Republican nomination for U.S. President, lambasted President Barack Obama Sunday for failing to keep a highly valued spy drone from falling into the hands of Iran's armed forces.

Perry was referring to a report on Fox news, according to which the US military offered Obama different courses of action for retrieving the drone or destroying it when it came down on Iranian soil last week, but he rejected both options for fear that they would be seen as acts of war.

"This president now, with Iran getting one of our predator drones in their possession(…), he had two choices. Actually, he had three. He chose the worst," Perry accused. "And those two opportunities he had was to either retrieve that drone or to destroy it. And he did the worst of the three. And he did absolutely nothing. And the Russians and the Chinese will have our highly technical equipment now. This president is the problem," Perry said.

He was speaking at the ABC News debate in Des Moines, Iowa.