The New York Times: Trump agreed to carry out strikes on a number of Iranian targets such as radars and rocket batteries and then fall back
US President Donald Trump has agreed to carry out military strikes against Iran in retaliation for the downing of a US reconnaissance plane but fall back on Thursday night, a day after rising tensions, the New York Times reported.
The newspaper quoted unnamed officials as saying that the president initially agreed to carry out strikes on a number of Iranian targets, such as radars and rocket batteries.
A senior US official said the operation was under way and in its early stages when it was withdrawn.
The official said the planes were in the air and the ships were in position, but no rockets were fired when the order was issued.
The paper said it was not yet clear whether the operation could be carried forward.
The strike, which came in response to a US $ 130 million ($ 130 million) plane crash, was scheduled to take place before dawn on Friday in Iran to reduce the risk to Iranian military and civilians.
Military officials were reportedly ordered to stop the strike shortly after the decision was issued “at least temporarily”.
On the other hand, the United States on Thursday banned “US civil aviation” from flying through the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman under Iran’s control, after the Iranian Revolutionary Guard dropped a US reconnaissance plane.
The restrictions are due to “increased military activity and increased political tensions in the region, posing an unintended risk to US civil aviation operations and the possibility of misjudgment or misrepresentation”, the US Civil Aviation Administration said in a statement.
“The threat to US civil aviation is reflected in a surface-to-air missile launched by Iran on a US drone aircraft” over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, the statement said.
The accident brought the two countries closer to open conflict in one of the world’s most active oil pipelines.
The ban came shortly after US President Donald Trump announced that Iran had committed a “gross error” by dropping an American aircraft in the international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, while Tehran confirmed that the aircraft had violated its airspace.
Throughout the day, a war of statements and coordinates between Washington and Tehran was underway in which both sides tried to prove his claims.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet on Twitter that the US Navy’s reconnaissance aircraft “violated Iranian airspace” and published the coordinates of the site where it was dropped.
Zarif wrote that the plane “was hit at 04:05 (23.35 GMT Wednesday) at 25 degrees, 59 minutes, 43 seconds north and 57 degrees, 20 minutes and 25 seconds east”.
“We found remnants of the US military aircraft in our territorial waters at the site where it was dropped”.
But the US response was not delayed, as the Pentagon published the map of the route taken by the plane on Thursday evening before it was dropped.
According to the map, the plane flew over international and Omani waters, but did not fly at all over Iranian waters.
The map also shows a photograph of a burning plane at 23.39 GMT at 25 degrees, 57 minutes, 42 seconds north, 56 degrees, 58 minutes and 22 seconds east.
A comparison of US and Iranian data reveals that there is a spatial and temporal difference.
The plane was hit by Zarif four minutes before the hour declared by Washington and elsewhere.
