The US military says it shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea.
The Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying towards the carrier “with an unclear purpose” when it was shot down by an F-35 US fighter jet, the US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“An F-35C fighter jet from the Abraham Lincoln shot down the Iranian drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, a navy spokesman for Central Command, said. He added that no US service members were harmed or US equipment damaged.
The shooting came as diplomats tried to broker nuclear talks between Iran and the US, and President Donald Trump said that with US warships heading to Iran “bad things” are likely to happen unless a deal is reached.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Tuesday that he had instructed the country’s foreign minister to “continue fair and equitable negotiations” with the US, the first clear sign that Tehran wanted to negotiate with Washington.
The announcement marks a significant turn for Iran’s reformist president, who has told Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in Iran is out of his control. It also showed the president had support from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for the talks, which the 86-year-old cleric had previously dismissed.
The Lincoln carrier strike group is the most visible part of a US military buildup in the Middle East after a violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in Iran last month, the deadliest domestic unrest since the 1979 revolution.
Trump, who stopped short of his threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since asked Tehran to make nuclear concessions, and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “talking seriously”, while Tehran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, said arrangements for negotiations were ongoing.
The Central Command said that in another incident on Tuesday, in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards harassed a US-flagged, US-crewed merchant vessel.
“Two IRGC boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the M/V Stena Imperative at high speed and threatened to board and seize the tanker,” Hawkins said.