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.
His 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.”
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Donald Trump reportedly approved then abruptly pulled back from launching military strikes against Iran on Friday morning, amid apparent White House confusion branded a “clear risk” to national security by a former US government foreign policy adviser.
Having initially said he believed Iran had made “a very big mistake” when it shot down a US drone early on Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, the president is nonetheless believed to have approved retaliatory military strikes against Tehran.
The operation to hit targets such as radars and missile batteries was in its initial stages, The New York Times said, and planes were in the air and ships being moved into position. But, before any missiles were fired, the president decided not to go ahead with the operation.
Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, claimed the “absence of any rational, coherent process for national security decision-making has always been a clear risk under Trump... Now we see what that looks like in a crisis.”
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, the incident following months of tensions arising from the US decision to withdraw from a 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran last year and secretary of state Mike Pompeo blaming the country's navy for the bombing of two foreign oil tankers in the strait with limpet mines.
At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order prohibiting US operators from flying in airspace controlled by Iran above “the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman”.
The order came as United Airlines suspended its Mumbai-Newark flight that passes over Iran citing safety concerns, The Financial Times said. Lufthansa, Qantas Airways and KLM flights have also been diverted away from the Gulf.
Our US correspondent Andrew Buncombe has the latest.
"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 Justin Trudeau, it’s hard to say," says Dr Karin von Hippel of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, attempting to explain the president's drastic retreat from attacking Iran.
Dr Von Hippel was referring to the Fox anchor who is thought to serve as Trump's unofficial adviser on the politics of attacking Iran and to the Canadian premier, who was at the White House on Thursday for a working lunch.
Carlson did actually take to the air yesterday to with a features called "Hungry for War", hitting out at the likes of national security adviser John Bolton who "want a war badly, badly enough to lie about it, that's why they're putting American troops into situations where conflict is inevitable".
“[Carlson] has been anti-war in the Middle East," Dr Von Hippel continued. "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, I just don’t know, but 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.”
"Trump is trying to show he’s tough, but he’s very nervous about war, and that’s actually reassuring," she said.
"He has Bolton and Pompeo on the one side pushing him very hard, super hawkish on Iran, and he himself had promised not to go to war in the Middle East... He wants to appear tough without actually doing anything significant."
This last line certainly ties in with Trump's run-ins with North Korea and Mexico.
Here's what Fox were broadcasting last night, so any personal intervention from Tucker Carlson - an unlikely hero of the hour - would have flown in the face of his warmongering colleagues.
Here's more from Tom Embury-Dennis.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office yesterday with Trudeau at his side, President Trump appeared to be seeking to downplay the significance of the shooting down of the US Navy's RQ-4A Global Hawk surveillance drone by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, suggesting the act could have been carried out by someone who was acting "loose and stupid," adding that he suspected it was shot down by mistake.
"I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth," he said. "I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it."
Trump, who has previously said he wants to avoid war and negotiate with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, characterised the incident as "a new wrinkle... a new fly in the ointment". Yet he also said "this country will not stand for it, that I can tell you".
"We had nobody in the drone. It would have made a big difference, let me tell you, it would have made a big, big difference [had it been piloted]," he added.
Trump's suggestion the incident had happened in error contradicted both his own aggressive tweet and a statement made by Iranian general Hossein Salami, who said it had been taken out to send "a clear message" to America, adding that Iran does “not have any intention for war with any country, but we are ready for war”.
The US military had also described the incident as ”an unprovoked attack on a US surveillance asset in international airspace”.
That asset cost a cool $130m (£103m) and has a wingspan larger than that of a Boeing 737 - a significant piece of kit.
The reaction among Democrats to the prospect of the US "bumbling" into another war in the Middle East - without even a permanent secretary of defence in place to oversee it - was understandably tense.
If you're coming into all of this late, here's where US Central Command said the drone went down.
Lieutenant General Joseph Guastella, the top US Air Force commander in the Middle East, said it was blasted at high altitude about 21 miles from the nearest point of land on the Iranian coast.
Iranian state media disputed this, saying the "spy" drone was brought down over the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, which is on the Gulf, with a locally made 3 Khordad missile.
Foreign minister Javad Zarif accused the US of "economic terrorism", pledging to "zealously defend our skies, land and waters" in offering his own map of the flashpoint.
Washington said on Monday it would deploy about 1,000 more troops, along with Patriot missiles and manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft, to the Middle East on top of a 1,500-troop increase announced after attacks on the Gulf tankers in May.
Trump has dispatched forces including aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers and troops over the past few weeks.
Iran apparently received a message from President Trump via Oman overnight warning that a US attack was imminent, according to Reuters.
"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 Khamenei to decide about this issue," one of the Iranian officials told the news agency on condition of anonymity.
A second official said: "We made it clear that the leader is against any talks, but the message will be conveyed to him to make a decision... However, we told the Omani official that any attack against Iran will have regional and international consequences."
Iran's defence minister Amir Hatami has accused the US of seeking to whip up "Iran phobia".
“Very complicated and suspicious conditions exist in the region,” he was quoted as saying by the Iranian Labour News Agency. “It seems that all of this is in line with an overall policy for creating Iran phobia and creating a consensus against the Islamic Republic.”
The US special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, met Saudi Arabia’s deputy defense minister Prince Khalid bin Salman in Riyadh on Friday, the minister tweeted.
They discussed recent attacks in the region which the United States and Saudi Arabia blame on Iran and Iran denies being behind.
Prince Khalid affirmed Saudi support for the US campaign to pressure Tehran.
In the run up to last night's excitement, Iran released a video it claimed showed the moment a surface-to-air missile struck the navy drone.
Here's Chris Riotta and Clark Mindock with more.
Russia has accused the US of deliberately stoking dangerous tensions around Iran and pushing the situation to the brink of war, the RIA news agency reported.
Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov called on Washington to weigh the possible consequences of conflict with Iran and cited the report in The New York Times as an indication the situation was extremely dangerous.
What a time for the Pentagon to be without a permanent defense secretary.
The military's acting representative, Patrick Shanahan (pictured below), stepped down this week and the man tapped to replace him on an interim basis appears to face legal hurdles that could initially prevent him from serving more than about six more weeks. It's an unusual level of uncertainty for one of the most important jobs in the administration.
"This is a very difficult time. With everything going on in Iran and all the provocations and counteractions, and to have no Secretary of Defense at this time is appalling," said Chuck Schumer on Thursday. "It shows the chaos in this administration. They have so many empty positions, revolving doors, in the most sensitive of security positions."
Shanahan and his planned replacement, army secretary Mark Esper, have been attending White House and other meetings, including sessions to debate how the military should respond to Iran's shoot-down of an American drone.
Esper is slated to take over as acting defense secretary at midnight on Sunday, and then head out Tuesday to a meeting of NATO defense ministers. There it will be critical for Esper to convince allies that he is now in charge, and that the US national security leadership is stable and able to make decisions when faced with escalating threats from Iran, amid questions from a wary Congress.
Meanwhile, inside the Pentagon, lawyers are debating how to get Esper through what will be a difficult legal and Congressional confirmation process. Defense officials said on Thursday that so far they don't yet have a clear way forward.
The key problem is that Trump never formally nominated Shanahan for the defence job. He announced his intention to do so, but as the months went on it never happened, and officials repeatedly said the vetting was dragging on. On Monday, Shanahan stepped down saying he wanted to spare his family as details of domestic problems linked to his messy divorce nearly a decade ago became public.
Trump immediately named Esper as the new acting secretary, but because of limitations laid out in court decisions and legislation governing how top level vacancies are filled, he will only be allowed to serve for about six weeks in that temporary capacity.
Law prohibits Esper from being nominated for the job while also serving as the acting secretary. If he is nominated, he'll have to step down and move to another job until the Senate votes on his confirmation. And anyone chosen to fill in temporarily - even for a short time while the confirmation process goes on - will have limited authorities and won't have all of the decision-making power that a defense secretary needs when his nation is at war in several countries and conducting major military operations in dozens of others.
Normally, senior leaders can be "acting" for 210 days, but because Shanahan was never nominated the clock on Esper started ticking on 1 January, when previous defence secretary Jim Mattis resigned. That would force Esper out of the acting role by 30 July.
Adding to the problem, is that even if Trump wants to nominate Esper (pictured below), he'll have to come up with someone to fill the job, also in an acting capacity, for an undetermined amount of time. Because Trump never nominated anyone to replace Shanahan as deputy defence secretary, which was his previous job, there is no one to easily step up and fill in as acting secretary during that confirmation process.
While lawmakers have expressed initial support for Esper, who is well known on Capitol Hill and previously served on committees as legislative staff, there is no guarantee he'll get a quick approval.
As a former executive at defence contractor Raytheon, Esper may have to excuse himself from decisions involving the company. And that could include sensitive, top level negotiations with Turkey over its decision to buy a Russian missile defence system, and America's counter offer of the Raytheon-made Patriot surface-to-air weapon.
Lawmakers have also expressed impatience with the large number of acting executives in the Trump administration. Under Trump at least 22 of the 42 people in top Cabinet jobs have been acting, or just over half.
In contrast, data compiled by incoming Yale political science professor Christina Kinane, suggests that from 1977 through mid-April of this year - the administrations of Jimmy Carter through the first half of Trump's - 266 individuals held Cabinet posts. Seventy-nine of them held their jobs on an acting basis, or three in 10.
Trump has said he likes naming acting officials, telling reporters in January, "It gives me more flexibility."
The practice lets Trump quickly, if temporarily, install allies in important positions while circumventing the Senate confirmation process, which can be risky with Republicans running the chamber by a slim 53-47 margin.
Iranian state television's website has published images it says show debris from the US military drone the regime's Revolutionary Guard shot down.
The pictures show what appears to be the skin of the US Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk without indicating where the footage was recorded. The photographs did not show any circuit boards, wiring or electronic equipment.
Meanwhile, Iran has told the US via Swiss ambassador Markus Leitner that Washington will be responsible for the consequences of any military action against Iran, the Fars news agency reports.
Because Washington and Tehran have had no formal diplomatic ties since 1979, the Swiss ambassador in Tehran represents American interests in the Islamic Republic.
The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that Iran's foreign ministry, which summoned the ambassador, had told the envoy that Iran was not pursuing war with the United States.
Separately, IRNA quoted Mohsen Baharvand, director of the Iranian foreign ministry department for the Americas, as saying: "If the side facing us take provocative and unthought-out actions, they will receive a reciprocal response whose consequences are unpredictable, and the loss and damage of it will be on all sides."
British Airways has joined the likes of Lufthansa, Qantas Airways and KLM in re-routing planes to avoid flying over the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman as a result of the US-Iran tensions.
Abu Dhabi-based long-haul carrier Etihad meanwhile said it has "contingency plans" in place after the US barred American-registered planes from flying through Iranian-administered airspace in the Persian Gulf.
Here's our travel correspondent Simon Calder with the latest.
The head of the Iran Revolutionary Guard's aerospace division says the country had warned a US military surveillance drone several times before launching a missile at it.
General Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the comment in an interview with Iranian state television on Friday. Debris from what Iranian authorities described as pieces of the US Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk lay behind him.
Hajizadeh told state TV: "Unfortunately they did not answer."
He added Iran collected the debris from its territorial waters, contradicting the US military's claim the drone was in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz when it was shot down.
Meanwhile, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, commenting on the situation in the Gulf, said "I have only one strong recommendation: nerves of steel".
At 10 Downing Street, Britain's prime minister Theresa May's team are in constant contact with Washington over the unfolding situation, according to a spokesperson.
Stepping away from the brink briefly, here's some non-Iran news concerning the Trump administration.
The president's beloved daughter Ivanka Trump has been found to be in violated of the Hatch Act by the US Office of the Special Counsel and should face disciplinary action.
The ethics watchdog believes the senior White House adviser broke its guidelines by promoting her father's business interests on Twitter while serving in her official capacity. The same body made the same complaint about Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway last week, calling for her dismissal.
A couple of lighter moments from the president's press conference with Justin Trudeau yesterday.
The Canadian PM had the audacity to cough in front of Trump, causing his Washington counterpart to wince but not berate him, as he did to his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney when the latter's hacking interrupted his remarks about the possible release of his financial records during an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC last week.
The president also showed off his new red, white and blue design for Air Force One, beaming at a model of the plane like a proud schoolboy showing off his entry for the annual science fair.
Here's Greg Evans on the latest twist in Coughgate.
In Alabama, disgraced Republican Roy Moore has announced his intention to run once again for the state Senate, despite being accused by six women of pursuing sexual relationships with them when they were teenagers as young as 14 during his tenure as assistant district attorney in his 30s.
The news will annoy Trump, who tweeted in late May effectively ordering Moore not to try again for the Senate after he lost a 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones.
Here's more from Chris Riotta.
Apparently Jerrold Nadler and the House Judiciary Committee knew full well that Hope Hicks' eight-hour appearance before the panel on Wednesday would be a farce - that was the point.
The former communications director was unable to answer any meaningful questions about obstruction of justice arising from the Mueller report after the White House invoked executive privilege - even where her desk had been situated - but the Democrats knew this would be the case and were merely seeking to "dramatise it for the court" with one eye on future legal action.
Nadler also says the Democrats will not pursue impeachment proceedings against Trump until its legal battle to secure testimony from another ex-White House aide, Don McGahn, is resolved.
"We want to go to court now. We want to unlock this now," he says.
Here's more on Hicks, who refused to answer no fewer than 155 questions.
Tech giant Apple is meanwhile begging the Trump administration not to drag its iPhones into the president's trade war with China.
This, from Fox's Mark Levin, is very, very rich indeed.
I'll just leave this here.
