The Iranian military said all its drones had returned safely to their bases and denied there was any confrontation with a U.S. vessel the previous day. The country’s elite Revolutionary Guard later released video it claimed proves the U.S. warship didn’t destroy one of its drones.”We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else,” tweeted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.However, Mr. Trump, speaking from the Oval Office Friday, said there was “no doubt” that a U.S. warship destroyed the drone.
“No doubt about it,” he said. “We shot it down.”Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed those statements on Friday. “It went down, and the fact that Foreign Minister Zarif either didn’t know or lied about it, I can’t account for. It happened.” The strategically vital strait is at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and serves as the passageway for one-fifth of all global crude exports, and oil prices ticked upward Friday on the news.Trump on Thursday said the USS Boxer took action after an Iranian drone closed to within 1,000 yards of the warship and ignored commands to stay away. The president accused Iran of “provocative and hostile” action and said the U.S. acted in self-defense.Neither Trump nor the Pentagon spelled out how the Boxer destroyed the drone. CNN reported that the ship used electronic jamming to bring it down rather than hitting it with a missile.On June 20, Iran shot down an American drone in the same waterway, and Trump came close to retaliating but called off an airstrike at the last moment.The Revolutionary Guard said the Iranian drone on Thursday had been carrying out regular surveillance when the USS Boxer arrived, and transmitted photos of the ship. The Guard said its forces continue to carefully monitor all movements of foreigners – especially “the terrorist forces” of the U.S. and the British in the strait and the Gulf.