Trump downplays Iranian shootdown of U.S. drone

WASHINGTON — A Navy surveillance drone was shot down by a missile fired from Iran, the Pentagon said Thursday, but U.S. and Iranian military officials disputed whether the unmanned aircraft was in Iranian airspace.

The incident was the most serious military clash between the U.S. and Iran since the Pentagon began beefing up its presence in the Middle East in early May, saying intelligence indicated that Iran was preparing to attack U.S. forces or allies.

President Donald Trump said Iran “made a very bad mistake.” But he played down the attack, suggesting it was inadvertent or a misjudgment by a rogue general or military unit and perhaps not a direct provocation by Iran’s government.

“I have a feeling it was a mistake made by someone who shouldn’t have been doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a visit by Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau. “I find it hard to believe it was intentional.”

Shunning the bellicose threats he often employs, Trump referred to the drone strike as “a new wrinkle, a new fly in the ointment” in the tense standoff between the United States and Iran.

The strike would be of greater concern had it caused casualties, he added. “We had nobody in the drone,” Trump said. “It would have made a big difference.”

Trump’s comments suggested he might not order largescale military retaliation for the downing of the unmanned aircraft and might still be hopeful of drawing Tehran into negotiations, instead of intensifying the confrontation in the region.

Trump’s portrayal of Iran’s actions as accidental was at odds with the account given by Iranian commanders. They emphasized that the missile was fired intentionally to defend Iranian territory.

Washington and Tehran have both made carefully calibrated military moves over the last month, raising tensions in the region but stopping short of acts that could start a war.

Iran has demonstrated “canny and calculated escalation” by targeting unmanned U.S. aircraft, oil tankers and other civilian targets in recent weeks, said Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a centrist think tank in Washington. “They have avoided killing U.S. personnel while showing that Iran is willing and able to strike critical targets.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said Thursday morning that administration officials would brief lawmakers.

“I think it’s a dangerous situation,” she told reporters at the Capitol. “I don’t think the president wants to go to war. There is no appetite to going to war in our country.”

U.S. officials have warned in recent days that Iran could face retaliation for any attacks that caused American casualties, and Pentagon officials have been preparing options for limited military strikes.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said the U.S. drone was downed when it flew into Iranian airspace in Hormozgan province near the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

But a U.S. military spokesman, Capt. Bill Urban, said the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude drone, was hit at 11:35 p.m. GMT Wednesday by an Iranian surface-to-air missile “while operating in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz,” a critical route for global oil supplies.

“This was an unprovoked attack on a U.S. surveillance asset in international airspace,” he said, but released no video or other evidence showing the plane’s location.

The conflicting accounts could not be immediately reconciled.