Trump: US warship destroys Iranian drone in Strait of Hormuz
WASHINGTON
(AP) — A U.S. warship on Thursday destroyed an Iranian drone in the
Strait of Hormuz after it threatened the ship, President Donald Trump
said. The incident marked a new escalation of tensions between the
countries less than one month after Iran downed an American drone and
Trump came close to retaliating with a military strike.
In remarks
at the White House, Trump blamed Iran for a “provocative and hostile”
action and said the U.S. responded in self-defense.
He said the
Navy’s USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, took defensive action
after the Iranian aircraft closed to within 1,000 yards of the ship and
ignored multiple calls to stand down.
“The United States reserves
the right to defend our personnel, facilities and interests and calls
upon all nations to condemn Iran’s attempts to disrupt freedom of
navigation and global commerce,” Trump said.
The Pentagon said the
incident happened at 10 a.m. local time Thursday in international
waters while the Boxer was transiting the waterway to enter the Persian
Gulf.
“A fixed-wing unmanned aerial system approached Boxer and
closed within a threatening range,” chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan
Hoffman said in a written statement. “The ship took defensive action
against the UAS to ensure the safety of the ship and its crew.”
It
was the latest in a string of moves by the U.S. and Iran that have
brought them closer to armed conflict since early May when Washington
accused Tehran of threatening U.S. forces and interests in Iraq and in
the Gulf. In response, the U.S. accelerated the deployment of an
aircraft carrier strike group to the Arabian Sea and deployed four B-52
long-range bombers to the Gulf state of Qatar. It also has deployed
additional Patriot air defense missile batteries in the Gulf region
since then.
Shortly after Iran shot down a U.S. Navy drone
aircraft on June 20, Trump ordered a retaliatory military strike but
called it off at the last moment, saying the risk of casualties was
disproportionate to the downing by Iran, which did not cost any U.S.
lives.
Iran claimed the U.S. drone violated its airspace; the Pentagon denied this.
Iran’s
foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Thursday that Iran and the
U.S. were only “a few minutes away from a war” after Iran downed the
American drone. He spoke to U.S.-based media on the sidelines of a visit
to the United Nations.
Earlier Thursday, Iran said its
Revolutionary Guard seized a foreign oil tanker and its crew of 12 for
smuggling fuel out of the country, and hours later released video
showing the vessel to be a United Arab Emirates-based ship that had
vanished in Iranian waters over the weekend.
The announcement
cleared up the fate of the missing ship but raised a host of other
questions and heightened worries about the free flow of traffic in the
Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical petroleum shipping
routes. One-fifth of global crude exports passes through the strait.
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Associated Press writer Ian Phillips in New York contributed to this report.