Tensions rise as US shoots down Iranian drone in Gulf
A US warship shot down an Iranian drone in the Gulf last night, bringing the two nations closer to a full- on confrontation.
Donald Trump said the US military ‘immediately destroyed’ the unmanned drone after it came within 1,000 yards of one of their naval vessels.
The Pentagon said the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, ‘took defensive action’ and opened fire against the drone, which ignored warnings to back off.
President Trump said the drone was ‘threatening the safety of the ship and the ship’s crew’.
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the downing of the drone had left Iran and the US only ‘a few minutes away from a war’.
Mr Trump called the incident the ‘latest of many provocative and hostile actions by Iran, against vessels operating in international waters’.
He added: ‘The United States reserves the right to defend our personnel facilities and interests and calls upon all nations to condemn Iran’s freedom of navigation and global commerce.
‘I also call on other nations to protect their ships as they go through the strait
‘The ship took defensive action’
and to work with us in the future.’ Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said: ‘A fixed-wing unmanned aerial system (UAS) approached Boxer and closed within a threatening range. The ship took defensive action against the UAS to ensure the safety of the ship and its crew.’
The news comes amid mounting tensions after the Trump administrations ordered a raft of sanctions against Iran.
The country shot down a US drone less than a month ago, saying it violated Iranian air space. The Pentagon denied this.
Mr Trump called off a retaliatory strike on June 20 with minutes to spare.
Earlier yesterday, Iran said its Revolutionary Guard had seized a foreign tanker, along with 12 crew. Iran accused the tanker of smuggling fuel out of the country.
Hours later, footage was released that showed the vessel to be a United Arab Emirates-based ship. The ship had disappeared in Iranian waters over the weekend.
When a 36-year- old former Somali refugee was elected to Congress last year, many American Muslims saw the historic victory as a sign they might at last be moving towards being fully accepted in US society.
Congress even changed its rules to allow Ilhan Omar to wear her hijab on the House floor.
But instead of reducing the Islamophobia that’s persisted in the US since the September 11 attacks, Miss Omar has only fuelled it. She has won ecstatic praise but also stirred up controversy and resentment as soon as she arrived in Washington.
Fellow Americans have two wildly different reactions to her. Some see her as the modern, multi-cultural embodiment of the American Dream; others as a socialism-loving, America-hating political menace who would happily Islamify the US if she could.
Born in war-torn Mogadishu, Miss Omar came to the US when she was 12, knowing only two english phrases: ‘Hello’ and ‘shut up’. She now sits in the House of Representatives for the midwestern state of Minnesota and her congressional district is almost entirely made up of the progressive, multi-cultural city of Minneapolis whose large population of Somalis Donald Trump has called a ‘disaster’ for the state.
She’s not only the first Somali American to serve in Congress but also one of the first two MuslimAmerican congresswomen.
Miss Omar’s soft voice and delicate features hide a tough political scrapper and the Democrat establishment recoil from her inflammatory stance on some issues, particularly about Jews, Israel and the 9/11 attacks.
She has been a critic of US support for Israel, tweeting in 2012: ‘Israel has hypnotised the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’ In February, she told her 1.27million Twitter followers that the Democrats’ support for Israel was ‘all about the Benjamins baby’ – Benjamin being slang for a $100 note, which bears Benjamin Franklin’s face. Democrat leaders