Iran on Friday shared what it said was video proof that the USS Boxer did not destroy its drone as United States President Donald Trump has asserted.
But at the White House, Donald Trump said that there was “no doubt about it” that the Boxer had brought down the unmanned aircraft.
United States officials said that the warship took action to defend itself Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz after multiple calls to stand down were ignored.
“No doubt about it. We shot it down,” Trump said.
Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said: “There is no question this was an Iranian drone, and the USS Boxer took it out as the president announced yesterday because it posed a threat to the ship and its crew. It’s entirely the right thing to do.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed the video shows the drone filming the Boxer before returning to base without damage.
The Iran armed forces branch said in a statement that forces continue to carefully monitor all movements of foreigners — especially “the terrorist forces” of the United States and the U.K. in the strait and the Persian Gulf.
Iran had “not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a tweet.
U.S. officials said that the Boxer jammed the drone’s signal, causing it to crash.
Electronic jamming breaks the data links between a drone and its controller on the ground. Such a move requires a vehicle-mounted, counter-drone device on the flight deck of the ship — a device that’s visible in official photographs of the Boxer shared by the Pentagon after the incident.
On June 20, Iran shot down an American drone in the same waterway, and Donald Trump came close to retaliating but called off an airstrike at the last moment.