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
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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
Questions are being asked about outside influence on Donald Trump after the US president called off air strikes against Iran at the last minute.
Having initially said he believed Iran made an error when it shot down a US drone on Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, the president nonetheless reportedly approved military strikes against the Islamic Republic later that day.
The operation to hit targets such as radars and missile batteries was in its initial stages, the New York Times reported, and planes were in the air and ships had been moved into position. But before any missiles were fired the operation was cancelled.
2020 hopeful Bernie Sanders has lambasted Donald Trump over the US-Iran conflict in a new interview -
The morning after Donald Trump called off a retaliatory strike on Iran for shooting down an unmanned US drone, rumours circulated claiming the president was watching Fox News’ Tucker Carlson when he abruptly made the decision to stop the military action in its tracks.
Those unverified claims turned out to be false — Mr Carlson’s show began at 8PM, shortly after the president halted the strike — but the fact that they were believed by so many who shared them across social media spoke to an issue increasingly concerning US officials.
Multiple nuclear and national security experts told The Independent the day after Mr Trump called of the strikes that, while the president may have temporarily eased tensions with Iran, his misleading information about the country’s nuclear deal is “misguided,” “counterproductive” and could lead to broader international conflict.
Story to come...
The US Senate has voted to block a multibillion-dollar weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, just hours after the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the British sale of arms to the Kingdom for use in Yemen was unlawful.
Both actions test Saudi Arabia’s relations with the West and pile further pressure on the Kingdom to reassess its actions in Yemen, where together with its Gulf allies it has been fighting a ruinous five-year war against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
It also points to concerns about powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The day before both decisions, UN investigators announced they had found “credible evidence” the young prince was linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
There appear to now be discrepancies in when the president had actually called off the retaliatory strike on Iran -
The president has been accused of sexual assault once again, this time by advice columnist E Jean Carroll, who said Mr Trump attacked her in a department store fitting room in the 1990s:
Here's video of Donald Trump discussing his decision to halt a retaliatory strike on Iran -
Senator Rand Paul has publicly called on Donald Trump to avoid war with Iran -
Here's my story on Donald Trump's lies about the Iran Nuclear Deal, and how the president's continued fake news could lead to a "catastrophic war" with Iran, according to national security experts.
This concludes today's live coverage. Scroll below to see updates as they came in from Washington on Friday.
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