Trump's sudden abandonment of Iran airstrikes prompts confusion over what prompted decision: 'Somebody obviously got to him'

Fox News hosts in apparent battle for ear of US leader

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.

:: Follow latest updates after Trump abruptly reverses order to launch airstrikes on Iran

It was not clear if Mr Trump had changed his mind, or whether the strike was called off for operational or strategic reasons, said the report, but Dr Karen von Hippel, a former senior adviser at the State Department said she believed “somebody obviously got to” the president.

“It’s really hard to say with President Trump, and I certainly wouldn’t consider myself to be a Trump whisperer, but somebody obviously got to him, and whether that was Tucker Carlson from Fox News or prime minister Trudeau, it’s hard to say, “ Dr Von Hippel, now director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Mr Trump had met with Canadian leader Justin Trudeau earlier that day, while the Daily Beast reported Mr Carlson has privately advised the president against military action in Iran.

It comes in contrast to the hawkish position on Tehran taken by two of the most senior members of the Trump administration: secretary of state Mike Pompeo and particularly John Bolton, Mr Trump’s national security adviser.

CNN reported Mr Bolton, who has repeatedly called for Iranian regime change in the past, has been locked in “debate” with Mr Trump over how to handle Iran, with other senior officials playing the role of “swing votes”.

On Fox News, there appears to be a battle for Mr Trump’s ear after Sean Hannity, another host and longtime friend of the president, on Thursday night called on the US to “bomb the hell out of Iran”.

“A strong message needs to be sent that a huge price will be paid if you take on the United States of America,” Mr Hannity said. “Simple peace through strength, and it works.”

Mr Carlson on Monday devoted a segment of his show to question the shaky evidence provided by US authorities purporting to prove Iran was responsible for an attack on two commercial oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

He attacked Mr Pompeo's "misplaced certainty" over Iran's responsibility and compared it to the Bush administration's discredited justifications of going to war with Iraq in 2003.

“We’re still paying a price for that,” Mr Carlson said.

Dr Von Hippel speculated that Mr Trump may have followed Mr Carlson’s advice.

“He’s been anti-war in the Middle East, and he’s been pushing Trump very hard not to do anything with Iran, and even challenged Pompeo’s intelligence briefing the other day on Fox News, and we know Trump really likes him and listens to him,” she said of Mr Carlson.

She added: “With Trump it seems that he has one approach and it’s the same approach in business as foreign policy, and he likes to push very hard to the brink, and he assumes others will cave, and in foreign policy it just doesn’t work that way.”

Ben Rhodes, former national security adviser to president Barack Obama, said the confusion surrounding strikes against Iran demonstrated an “absence of any rational, coherent process for national security decision making” that “has always been a clear risk under Trump”.

“Now we see what that looks like in a crisis,” he added.

Former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, suggested the leak over Mr Trump’s U-turn could itself be an attempt by a Trump administration official to force the president’s hand into striking Iran by making him “look weak”.

Iranian officials told Reuters on Friday that Tehran had received a message from Mr Trump through Oman overnight warning a US attack on Iran was imminent.

“In his message, Trump said he was against any war with Iran and wanted to talk to Tehran about various issues ... He gave a short period of time to get our response but Iran’s immediate response was that it is up to Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei to decide about this issue,” one of the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The circumstances of the shooting down of the drone, a US navy RQ-4A Global Hawk, by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, are disputed.

Iran said the drone, with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 and costing more than over $100m (£79m), had violated its territorial airspace.

The US said the "unprovoked attack” happened in international airspace, but failed to provide compelling evidence for the claim. Either way, it marked the first time Iran had struck the US military, which released a set of coordinates it claimed the drone was shot down at.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter that the aircraft had taken off from the United Arab Emirates “in stealth mode & violated Iranian airspace”.

A Revolutionary Guards statement said the drone’s identification transponder had been switched off “in violation of aviation rules and was moving in full secrecy” when it was downed, Reuters quoted the Iranian state broadcaster IRIB as saying.

Additional reporting by agencies