In this May 1, 2019, photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) transits the San Diego Bay in San Diego, Calif.Petty Officer 2nd Class Jesse Monford/The Associated Press
The U.S. military downed an Iranian drone Thursday in what President Donald Trump called an act of self-defence against hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz.
Officials said the relatively small drone came within 1,000 yards of the USS Boxer, a U.S. amphibious assault ship in the strait. It was not known if the drone was armed, but a Pentagon spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, said that it had “closed within a threatening range” before being shot down over international waters.
“The drone was immediately destroyed,” Mr. Trump said in a surprise announcement at the White House. “This is the latest of many provocative and hostile actions by Iran against vessels operating in international waters.”
Mr. Trump spoke on the same day that Iran said it had seized a ship carrying fuel through the strait in what it described as a smuggling operation – just days after a United Arab Emirates vessel disappeared in the Persian Gulf.
At the same time, Iran’s chief diplomat offered a modest road map for easing tensions with the United States.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran appeared to brush off Mr. Trump’s broadside. “The drone issue is being investigated, but based on the latest news I have from Tehran, we have no information about losing a drone,” he told reporters at the United Nations.
The drone’s downing, and the simultaneous first sprout of a diplomatic offer, captured the precarious crossroads where the adversaries of 40 years find themselves.
The Trump administration and parts of the Iranian government have each appeared to be desperately seeking an off-ramp, aware that any move from shadowboxing to open conflict could be disastrous.
But both have dug themselves in.
In New York, Mr. Zarif initially appeared determined to calm tensions with the United States.
At a morning meeting with journalists, Mr. Zarif said he was willing to discuss possible ways out of the crisis that erupted after Mr. Trump last year withdrew the United States from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
For the first time, he floated an opening bid of modest steps that Tehran would be willing to take as part of new talks between the two adversaries.
The proposal would accelerate what the nuclear accord envisions as a “transition day,” now scheduled for 2023. That is when Iran formally ratifies an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to allow far more intrusive inspections of the country, including sites that Tehran has never declared as nuclear-related.
In return, under the agreement, Congress would have to act to lift virtually all U.S. sanctions on Iran.
The offer is all but certain to be rejected by the Trump administration, which describes Iran as increasingly desperate as sanctions take full effect. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has often said that sanctions will be lifted only in return for an agreement that permanently ends Iran’s production of nuclear fuel, limits its missile program to purely defensive weapons and ends its support for terrorist groups.
Yet on Thursday, Mr. Zarif insisted that Iran would never back away from its missile program while the United States arms its Arab adversaries with similar weapons. Yet, he described each of Tehran’s recent steps to escalate its uranium enrichment as carefully calibrated – and said they “could be reversed” if the United States backed away from sanctions that were imposed once Mr. Trump left the nuclear deal.
Still, the Iranian diplomat struck a philosophical tone if nothing came of efforts to restart negotiations.
“We will survive, we will prosper, long after President Trump is gone,” he said. “Our time slots are in millennia.”
He also said “we came a few minutes away from a war” last month after Tehran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone.
“Prudence prevailed,” Mr. Zarif said.
In that case, Washington and Tehran disagreed over whether the drone was flying over international waters. The Trump administration considered retaliating with military strikes against a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries. At the time, officials said Mr. Trump had approved the strikes.
But with minutes to spare and planes already headed to their targets, the President abruptly pulled back to prevent what he said would have been the deaths of about 150 Iranians. He also said the number of deaths would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”
On Thursday, Mr. Zarif also played down Iran’s detention of the vessel from the strait last weekend. He said it was a small ship, not a tanker, and was carrying about one million litres of fuel. He described it as a typical smuggling operation, given that Iran subsidizes fuel for its own population.
About 20 per cent of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Persian Gulf waterway that is a vital conduit for maritime petroleum traffic.
The vessel and its country of origin were not identified. But an account published by PressTV, an official English-language Iranian website, included a video clip it said had been provided by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, showing the vessel’s name on its stern as the Riah. That is the name of the Emirati ship, incommunicado since late Saturday while it had been travelling in the Persian Gulf.
A Revolutionary Guard statement said the episode took place south of Iran’s Larak Island.
In Washington, the State Department condemned what it called the Revolutionary Guard’s “continued harassment of vessels and interference with safe passage in and around the Strait of Hormuz” and demanded the immediate release of the ship and crew.
U.S. officials have blamed Iran for apparent attacks on tankers in May and June, which came after new sanctions that aimed to cut off its ability to sell oil, a pillar of its economy.
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.