Donald Trump

President Donald Trump called Iran's shooting of an unmanned American drone a “very big mistake.” | Alex Wong/Getty Images


Trump says he pulled back Iran strike because of potential death toll

The president said the strike would not have been 'proportionate' to Iran's attack on an unmanned drone.


President Donald Trump on Friday confirmed that he called off a retaliatory strike on Iran at the last minute Thursday night, saying he decided that the potential cost of human lives was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights [sic] when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets, adding that not only would such an attack have been disproportionate, “I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world.”


Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Thursday it had shot down an American drone, claiming it had entered Iranian airspace, an assertion sharply disputed by the U.S., which has maintained the drone was over international waters. Both countries have produced what they say is evidence supporting their diverging positions.

Iran’s attack, which took place amid steadily escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran, prompted the president to summon congressional leaders to the White House for a briefing in the Situation Room on Thursday afternoon and drew mixed reactions from Iran hawks and anti-interventionists in Congress.

But while Trump called the drone-downing a “very big mistake” and apparently later authorized a retaliatory attack before calling it off, the president had earlier suggested he was looking to avoid a military conflict with Iran.

"I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth. I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it," the president said in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, telling reporters, "it would have made a big, big difference" if Iran’s attack had targeted military personnel.

Trump’s hesitation is indicative of the current struggle between different factions of his administration, and his own campaign promises to keep the country from entering into any additional conflicts in the Middle East. It is unclear why he apparently waited so long to inquire about the possible casualties stemming from the strike he approved — a New York Times report cited a senior administration official who said that “planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down.”

Trump denied that the plan was that far along when he changed his mind, telling “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Friday that planes “would have been [in the air] pretty soon, and things would have happened to a point where you would not turn back, you could not turn back.”

“Nothing was green lighted until the very end because things change,” he insisted, adding that everything was “ready to go subject my approval.”

He elaborated on his thought process further, reiterating that he thought the estimated casualties of the strike would have been a mismatch.

“I thought about it for a second and I said, you know what, they shot down an unmanned drone, plane, whatever you want to call it, and here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead," Trump said, adding, "And I didn’t like it, I didn’t think, I didn’t think it was proportionate."

Despite Trump’s framing of his decision as a show of mercy, Iran is now claiming that Thursday’s episode could have been much worse. On the sidelines of an event to display the U.S. drone’s wreckage, Iranian Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that the regime spared a manned American plane flying close to the drone, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

“The plane had also violated our airspace and we could target it but we did not do so because our goal behind downing the American drone was to warn the terrorist forces of the US,” the commander claimed, asserting that the spared plane had 35 crew members on it.

On Thursday, the president reportedly conveyed a message to Iran via neighboring Oman warning that a strike was imminent and calling for talks between the two countries to deescalate the growing crisis. “In his message, Trump said he was against any war with Iran and wanted to talk to Tehran about various issues,” Iranian officials told Reuters.

Thursday’s events took place against the backdrop of several key provocations over the course of the past several months from both countries. Since Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear deal last year, the U.S. has stepped up its maximum-pressure campaign in an attempt to force Iran into returning to negotiations to wind down its nuclear program, using sanctions in an attempt to choke off its lucrative oil industry and designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity.

Earlier this week, Tehran vowed that it would drastically ramp up its nuclear program, in violation of the Obama-era pact intended to restrain the Islamist country unless the remaining signatories stepped in to blunt the impact of U.S. sanctions.

And last week, two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf sustained damage from apparent explosions, an attack the U.S. has blamed on Iranian limpet mines. Iran has denied culpability in the incident, which followed similar attacks on tankers in the same region and drone attacks on Saudi oil pipelines last month.

The Trump administration, in response, has ordered several waves of U.S. troops to the region, while the remaining signatories in Europe, China and Russia are set to meet to craft a response to Iran’s warning.

The White House said Friday that Trump had spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman about Iran, specifically, “Saudi Arabia’s critical role in ensuring stability in the Middle East” and “the threat posed by the Iranian regime’s escalatory behavior.”

While Trump on Friday affirmed that he had called off the planned strike, he vowed a forceful response to Iran’s lashing out. “Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he wrote, adding: “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

While defense hawks like Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) appeared to encourage military action against Iran on Thursday, Democratic leaders in Congress demanded approval before the administration took any action. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged Trump not to “bumble into a war,” saying he told those gathered at Thursday’s Situation Room huddle that “the Democratic position is that congressional approval must be required before funding any conflict in Iran.”

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who is sponsoring an amendment to the Senate’s annual defense authorization bill to that effect, called for the removal of national security adviser John Bolton, whose hawkish tendencies are well-known.

“We cannot trust him to hold off John Bolton and other administration officials who are brazenly pushing for war with Iran for long,” Udall said of the president. “Our Iran policy is in chaos, careening towards war and to change course the president should immediately fire John Bolton.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday reiterated what she told reporters upon her return from the White House a day before, urging restraint from the administration and a “a strong, smart and strategic approach.” The California Democrat also called on Trump not to “strengthen the hand of Iran's hardliners” and said she was not given a heads up that a strike was in the works, unlike when the president launched a retaliatory attack on Syria in 2017.

"We are in an extremely dangerous and sensitive situation with Iran. We must calibrate a response that de-escalates and advances American interests, and we must be clear as to what those interests are,” she said in a statement in which she also condemned the “dangerous conduct of the Iranian regime.”

She told reporters Friday that ultimately, “a strike of that amount of collateral damage would be very provocative and I'm glad the president did not take that” course of action.

While Pelosi said that lawmakers left the White House Thursday "with the idea that the president was going to consider some options," she gave no indication that she believed a strike would take place. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel said he felt differently.

"Yesterday I left the meeting with the president and other members of the House and Senate with the definite feeling we were going to somehow strike Iran," he told CNNs Jake Tapper. "The president didn't go into details but certainly gave strong feelings that we were going to retaliate somehow."

He also cast doubt on Trump's suggestion that he was in the dark about the potential death toll of the assault he approved until the last minute. "I find it difficult to believe that he waited until the very end" to ask about it, Engel said, noting that he was "shocked this morning when I heard [Trump] had done an about-face."

Democrats — especially those running for president — were quick to condemn Trump for authorizing the strike to begin with, and blamed the president for getting into such a tight spot with Iran.

“I don't think that this president understands what it means to attack another country and what the consequences could be,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said in an interview on MSNBC. “You need to know what the reaction will be in the first instance, the second instance and the third instance. You need to understand what escalation could occur. And you need to have a plan for it.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) similarly slammed the president, drawing a comparison with the Iraq War that Trump has campaigned against.

“This is not reality television, where decisions are made in the pursuit of maximum drama,” he said in a statement. “As I have said, this Administration’s clear march to war has dramatically increased the potential for miscalculation that threatens to turn even a minor dispute into a regional conflagration that would be more devastating than our misguided war in Iraq.”

Trump’s reversal drew praise even from some Iran hawks.

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a leading Iran hawk who has worked closely with the administration on Iran policy, said the president was right not to be reactive or “get distracted.”

He warned the president against falling “into the escalation trap” and predicted that “the predicate for more coercive action will present itself and Trump will be able to move forward with stronger bipartisan and international support.”

But other Republicans, such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), disagreed with the president’s decision to back off military action for the time being.

“I think ultimately if there still is a response I think that will be all judged within that context,” Kinzinger, an Iraq War veteran, told MSNBC. “But if there isn't, if there's an idea that now we can negotiate or do something else, I think it has the potential of inviting a look of weakness.”

The congressman argued that the drone’s considerable size meant it could have easily been mistaken for a manned aircraft, which “I think warrants a proportional response,” though he said, “it’s an art in terms of what that is.”

He indicated he was troubled by the amount of detail Trump’s tweet contained, but expressed more concern with Trump’s waffling.

“I think it sends a bad message. I mean you look at some of the talk about Venezuela and then backing away on that. With Iran and other areas, I think it sends the message that you don't necessarily know where that red line is,” Kinzinger said. “It will ultimately depend on if there's a response, if that message is sent. But if there's not, it will send the message that the red line may not be so red.”

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