WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday, threatening to escalate tensions as the Trump administration warns of possible military action to bring Iran to the negotiating table.
The drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and “continued to fly toward the ship despite mitigation measures taken by US forces operating in international waters,” Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said in a statement Tuesday.
The shooting happened a few hours after Iranian forces harassed a merchant ship flying an American flag and sailing in the Strait of Hormuz, the US military said.
The Shahed-139 drone was shot down by an F-35C fighter jet from the Lincoln, which, according to Hawkins, was sailing about 500 miles (800 kilometers) off Iran’s southern coast. The military statement noted that no American troops were harmed and no American equipment was damaged.
Then, hours later, forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed the merchant ship Stena Imperative, the military said.
According to Hawkins’ statement, two boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the ship “at high speed and threatened to board and seize the tanker.”
The destroyer USS McFaul responded to the scene and escorted the Imperative Stena “with defensive air support from the US Air Force,” the statement said, adding that the merchant vessel was now safely underway.
The actions come as tensions run high between the longtime adversaries. They rose again as Iran’s government spent weeks cracking down on protests that began in late December against growing economic instability before widening into a challenge to the Islamic Republic.
President Donald Trump had promised early in January to “save” the Iranians from their government’s bloody crackdown on protesters, which later turned into a pressure campaign for Tehran to make an agreement on its nuclear program. This even as the Republican president insists that Iranian nuclear sites were “destroyed” in the US strikes in June.
“We have talks going on with Iran. We’ll see how everything works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.
“I would like to see a negotiated deal,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we can work something out, that would be great. And if we can’t, probably bad things will happen.”
The United States shot down the drone hours after Iran’s president said Tuesday that he had instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, marking one of the first clear signs from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate with Washington despite a breakdown in talks last summer.
Turkey has been working behind the scenes to get the talks there later this week as US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff travels to the region. A Turkish official later said that the location of the talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process.
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Amiri reported from New York.