President Donald Trump said Thursday that the US military destroyed an Iranian aerial drone in the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation in the months-long standoff between the US and Iran.
Just hours before, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had said it had seized a foreign oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, a critical international waterway in the Persian Gulf.
These latest incidents come as tensions threaten to spill over between the United States and Iran, particularly since the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and escalated its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
Trump on Thursday said the incident involved the USS Boxer, a US Navy ship, which took “defensive action” against an Iranian drone that had closed to “a very, very near distance, approximately 1,000 yards” and ignored “multiple calls to stand down and was threatening the safety of the ship and the ship’s crew.”
The drone was immediately destroyed, he said.
“This is the latest provocative and hostile actions by Iran against vessels operating in international waters,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “The United States reserves the right to defend our personnel and facilities and interests and calls upon all nations to condemn Iran’s attempts to disrupt freedom of navigation and global commerce.”
BREAKING: US has “destroyed” an Iranian drone in Strait of Hormuz, President Trump says; asserts that the drone ignored warnings from USS Boxer to stand down as it neared the ship. pic.twitter.com/T7jfbyjMm3
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 18, 2019
The Pentagon has said that the USS Boxer was in international waters when the drone approached.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has said that his country has no information about losing a drone, according to Voice of America.
Details regarding the US’s destruction of an Iranian drone are still emerging, but it is likely to add volatility to an already dangerous standoff between Washington and Iran.
Earlier Thursday, Iranian media confirmed that the IRGC had seized an oil tanker on Sunday, which it accused of smuggling oil, near Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Here, too, the situation is pretty strange. The seized ship appears to be a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker based in the United Arab Emirates known as the MT Riah, which went missing Sunday after its radio stopped transmitting signals in the same area of the Persian Gulf on Sunday. The tanker hasn’t been heard from since, but Iranian media released a video of the detained ship, which appears to be the Riah, based on the visible name and registration.
As it turned out, the ship seized by IRGC was the RIAH.
— Henry Rome (@hrome2) July 18, 2019
Iranian foreign ministry had insisted RIAH suffered a technical glitch: "Tug boats assisted the disabled vessel and towed it towards Iranian territorial waters to undergo required repair." https://t.co/HEHy43URvx
Iran claims the tanker was trying to steal Iranian fuel, but as the Washington Post notes, Iran itself has tried to hide its shipments of oil because of tough US sanctions.
This drone incident is the latest major flare-up in the ongoing Iran-US crisis
The Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign, including additional harsh sanctions, has squeezed Iran, which has responded by lashing out and threatening to disrupt transport through the Strait of Hormuz. The US has accused Iran of attacking oil tankers in this strategic waterway. (Iran denies involvement in any attacks.)
Last month, however, Iran shot down a US military drone, pushing the White House to consider striking Iran. Trump said he pulled back at the last minute.
This month, Iran breached the uranium enrichment limits of the nuclear deal in an attempt to get the US’s European allies — who remain party to the deal — to ease some of the financial pressure of US sanctions. Iran sees Germany, France, and the United Kingdom as reneging on the economic commitments that were part of the agreement, also known as the JCPOA.
In response to Iran’s provocations in the Persian Gulf, the US said last week that it was planning to send Navy ships to help escort tankers through the Persian Gulf route. As Vox’s Alex Ward reported:
The current plan is for the US to send “command and control” ships to the area that will help lead the effort and for other countries’ vessels to do the actual escorting of the tankers.
“Escorting in the normal course of events would be done by countries who have the same flag, so a ship that is flagged from a particular country would be escorted by that country,” [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph] Dunford told reporters Tuesday. “What the United States is uniquely capable of providing is some of the command and control, some of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”
But as experts pointed out, the problem with this plan is that increased US presence makes it all the more likely that something will go wrong, and either Iran or the US will miscalculate — which could push both sides closer to conflict.
While the situation is still unfolding, the US destruction of an Iranian drone may be a harbinger of what some have feared. As retired Navy Vice Adm. Michael Franken told Vox last week: “Beware of what you’re walking into, because nothing good happens in the Strait of Hormuz.”