Trump-Iran news: President claims he called off airstrikes on Tehran after general told him '150 people would die'
White House reportedly approves then abruptly pulls back from offensive in Middle East
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Donald Trump approved military strikes against Iran before abruptly pulling back at the last minute, sparking controversy and outcry.
“On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,” the president explained in a series of tweets.
Having responded to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ decision to shoot down the costly US Navy surveillance drone with a surface-to-air missile, the president said Tehran had made “a very big mistake” but ultimately refrained from going through with an operation that would have targetted radars and missile batteries in the Gulf.
The president said on Friday the US was “cocked and loaded” to retaliate against Iran for downing the unmanned American surveillance drone but he cancelled the strikes minutes before they were to be launched after being told 150 people could die.
Mr Trump’s tweeted statement raised important questions, including why he learned about possible deaths only at the last minute.
Tensions high as Trump approves new Iran sanctions: In pictures
Show all 17His stance was the latest example of the president showing some reluctance to escalate tensions with Iran into open military conflict.
He did not rule out a future strike but said in a TV interview that the likelihood of casualties from the Thursday night plan to attack three sites in Iran did not seem like the correct response to shooting down an unmanned drone earlier in the day in the Strait of Hormuz.
“I didn’t think it was proportionate,” he said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.
The aborted attack was the closest the US has come to a direct military strike on Iran in the year since the administration pulled out of the 2015 international agreement intended to curb the Iranian nuclear program and launched a campaign of increasing economic pressure against the Islamic Republic.
Mr Trump told NBC News that he never gave a final order to launch the strikes — planes were not yet in the air but would have been “pretty soon.”
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
A commander with Iran's Revolutionary Guard has said the country's military refrained from firing on a US plane with 35 people on board that it says was accompanying the offending drone into its airspace, according to Tehran's Tasnim News.
German chancellor Angela Merkel says European countries are still hoping there can be a political solution to the tensions between the United States and Iran.
Merkel told reporters in Brussels on Friday that European governments' foreign policy advisers had met on the sidelines of a European Council meeting to discuss the tensions in the region.
She says "naturally we are worried about the situation and we're counting on diplomatic negotiations for a political solution to a very tense situation."
Her spokeswoman Martina Fietz said earlier that "regarding President Trump, I can say that there are numerous statements and indications that the American president would like to avoid a military confrontation and we naturally welcome that."
"It is not in the interest of the American people nor our service members to be going into a war that is not required," says California Democratic congresswoman Jackie Speier.
Republican senator Lindsey Graham does not agree with that statement.
Indian officials say their navy has deployed two warships to the Gulf of Oman.
Indian navy spokesman Dalip Kumar Sharma says the ships Chennai and Sunayna have deployed to the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman to undertake maritime security operations, escort Indian merchant ships and "coordinate between stakeholders."
Indian military aircraft are also conducting aerial surveillance in the area.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has reached out to foreign leaders to convince them that the apparent attacks on the key Middle Eastern shipping route is a problem for the world at large. Iran is India's third-largest source of imported oil.
Pompeo is visiting India next Tuesday, ahead of G20 talks in Osaka, Japan.
Here's the British response from our political editor Andrew Woodcock.
Fox & Friends, Donald Trump's favourite news programme, appears to be engaged in an internal row over whether the US should launch airstrikes against Iran.
As per usual on the show, the presenters seem to be considering an audience of one.
European Council president Donald Tusk is denying that the EU has been too passive in its response to rising tensions between the United States and Iran.
After chairing a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Friday, Tusk said that "sometimes it's better not to intervene. The biggest problems in our history (were) always provoked by too active politics, not too passive."
Tusk says the leaders "follow the situation closely and are very concerned about the developments in the Gulf region."
But he says there was "no reason to prepare a specific European statement on this" at the summit.
The EU is urging restraint on both sides and the bloc's top diplomat is in regular contact with the two. The EU is struggling to uphold the Iran nuclear deal, which is at risk of collapse due to US sanctions.
Donald Trump has tweeted for the first time this morning, and surprisingly his message is not about the tensions with Iran.
The tweets appear to be a reference to reporting in the right-wing media that a journalist at the New York Times forwarded in 2017 information to the FBI that Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, had met with a Russian bank official.
Contrary to Mr Trump's suggestion, sending that email is completely legal.
News agency Reuters has filed a report on airlines rerouting to avoid Iranian airspace in the face of escalating tensions in the region.
Some global airlines are rerouting flights to avoid Iran-controlled airspace over the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, they said on Friday, after the US aviation regulator barred its carriers from the area until further notice. Thursday's emergency order from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) came after Iran shot down a high-altitude US drone with a surface-to-air missile, sparking concerns about a threat to the safety of commercial airlines. The downing of the unarmed Global Hawk drone, which can fly up to 60,000ft, was the latest in a series of incidents in the Gulf region, a critical artery for global oil supplies, that included explosive strikes on six oil tankers. According to flight tracking applications, the FAA said, the nearest civil aircraft was operating within about 45 nautical miles of the unmanned aircraft when it was shot down. "There were numerous civil aviation aircraft operating in the area at the time of the intercept," the FFA said, adding that its prohibition would stay in place until further notice. Hours earlier, United Airlines suspended flights between New Jersey's Newark airport and India's financial capital of Mumbai following a safety review. Emirates Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd, Germany's Lufthansa, British Airways and KLM of the Netherlands said they were rerouting flights to avoid the area.
Time magazine has released the entire transcript of its 57-minute interview with Donald Trump, which was held on Monday, three days before the US drone was shot down but after Iran said it was planning on breaking certain terms in the 2015 nuclear agreement.
In it, Mr Trump says Tehran would be making "a big mistake" by enriching uranium above levels set by the deal, which the president last year pulled the US out of.
Asked if he was considering military action, Mr Trump said: "I wouldn’t say that. I can’t say that at all. It would be inappropriate. But they would be making a big mistake if they enriched."
He then appears to hit out at America's entanglement around the Persian Gulf in a rather rambling monologue about oil.
"The companies, countries that benefit from the Straits," he said. "Just - I want to show you something. China gets 60 per cent of their oil there. Japan 25 per cent of their oil. So many of the other places get such vast amounts of oil there.
"We get very little. You know, we have made tremendous progress in the last 2 and 1/2 years in energy, and when the pipelines get built, we’re now an exporter of energy.
"So we’re not in the position that we were in, that we used to be in in the Middle East where we needed - you know we were there - some people would say we were there for the oil."
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments