Iran may still face US military action
Trump: Force is ‘always’ possible, but so is friendship
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday he’s still considering military action against Iran after it downed an unmanned U.S. military aircraft, saying the use of force is “always on the table until we get this solved.”
Days after initially saying he found it “hard to believe” the downing was intentional, Trump accused Iran of “knowingly” targeting the plane. He reiterated that he aborted a planned military strike set for Thursday.
“I don’t want to kill 150 Iranians. I don’t want to kill 150 of anything or anybody unless it’s absolutely necessary,” he told reporters as he left the White House for the Camp David presidential retreat. Meetings about Iran were on his weekend agenda, Trump said.
Trump said “we very much appreciate” a decision by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard not to shoot down a U.S. spy plane carrying more than 30 people, though he said the downing of the drone was “probably intentional.”
“But regardless, they targeted something without a person in it, without a man or woman, and certainly without anybody from the United States in it. So, we want to be proportionate,” Trump said.
Conservative critics excoriated the Obama administration when then-Secretary of State John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for releasing a group of American sailors who had apparently strayed into Iranian waters in 2016.
Trump also said he could imagine a future where the U.S. is Iran’s “best friend.”
The president’s unusually friendly tone toward the chief U.S. adversary in the Middle East included an open invitation to Iranian leadership to “start all over” with negotiations on its nuclear program following his decision to withdraw from the 2015 multinational pact negotiated under President Barack Obama.
“Iran wants to become a wealthy nation again. Let’s make Iran great again. Does that make sense? Make Iran great again, OK with me,” Trump said. “But they’re never gonna do it if they think in five or six years, they’re gonna have a nuclear weapon.
“We are not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon. And when they agree to that, they are going to have a wealthy country, and they are going to be so happy, and I’m going to be their best friend. I hope that happens, but it may not.”
Trump tweeted later that additional U.S. sanctions will be applied to Iran on Monday, but did not specify the type. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday that Iran’s financial sector would be penalized soon if it doesn’t work to stop evading international guidelines designed to combat money laundering.
The president’s comments came as Iran summoned the United Arab Emirates’ top envoy to Tehran to protest the neighboring Arab nation’s decision to allow the U.S. to use a base there to launch the drone that Iran says entered its airspace, state media reported Saturday.
Iran issued a “strong protest” to the UAE diplomat, saying Iran does not tolerate the facilitation of foreign forces that violate its territory, the report by the official IRNA news agency said.
The U.S. and Iran disputed the circumstances leading up to an Iranian surface-to-air missile bringing down the drone, an unmanned aircraft costing over $100 million.
The U.S. has responded against the Islamic Republic in quieter ways, however, as Trump approved an offensive cyber strike that disabled Iranian computer systems used to control rocket and missile launches, according to people familiar with the matter.
The cyber strikes, launched Thursday night by personnel with U.S. Cyber Command, were in the works for weeks if not months, according to two of these people, who said the Pentagon proposed launching them after Iran’s alleged attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman earlier this month.
The strike against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was coordinated with U.S. Central Command, the military organization with purview of activity through the Middle East, these people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because operation remains extremely sensitive.
The White House declined to comment, as did officials at U.S. Cyber Command. Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said, “As a matter of policy and for operational security, we do not discuss cyberspace operations, intelligence or planning.”
The cyber strikes were first reported Saturday by Yahoo News.
Thursday’s strikes against the IRGC represented the first offensive show of force since Cyber Command was elevated to a full combatant command in May. It leveraged new authorities, granted by the president, that have streamlined the approval process for such measures.
Cybercom launched an operation against Russia last fall to deny Internet “trolls” affiliated with the Internet Research Agency the ability to carry out political influence operations on U.S. social media platforms. But the operation against Iran was more disabling.
“This is not something they can put back together so easily,” said one person, who like others was not authorized to speak for the record.