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 ramp up tensions as the Trump administration warns of possible military action to get Iran to the negotiating table.
The drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and “continued to fly toward the ship despite de-escalatory measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters,” Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said in a statement Tuesday.
The shootdown occurred within hours of Iranian forces harassing a U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed merchant vessel that was sailing in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. 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 from Iran’s southern coast. The military’s statement noted that no American troops were harmed and no U.S. equipment was damaged.
Then, hours later, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces harassed the merchant vessel Stena Imperative, the military said.
According to Hawkins’ statement, two boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the ship “at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker.”
The destroyer USS McFaul responded to the scene and escorted the Stena Imperative “with defensive air support from the U.S. Air Force,” the statement said, adding that the merchant vessel was now sailing safely.
The actions come as tensions are high between the longtime adversaries. They began to rise again as Iran’s government spent weeks quelling protests that began in late December against growing economic instability before broadening into a challenge to the Islamic Republic.
President Donald Trump had promised in early January to “rescue” Iranians from their government’s bloody crackdown on protesters, which later morphed into a pressure campaign to get Tehran to make a deal over its nuclear program. That is even as the Republican president insists Iranian nuclear sites were “obliterated” in U.S. strikes in June.
“We have talks going on with Iran. We’ll see how it all 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’d like to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that’d be great. And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.”
The U.S. shot down the drone hours after Iran’s president said Tuesday that he instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the U.S., marking one of the first clear signs from Tehran it wants to try to negotiate with Washington despite a breakdown of talks last summer.
Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling in the region. A Turkish official later said that the location of talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process.
Amiri reported from New York.