Is a downed drone the final straw that will push the U.S. to war with Iran? Iran’s attack on an unmanned surveillance aircraft in the Gulf on Wednesday seems like the kind of opening Trump’s hawkish advisors would use to argue for a strike back at a trouble-making Tehran. Trump himself doesn’t seem too worked up about the incident and suggested the attack could’ve been a “mistake.” So whose argument will win the day? Just how dangerous is Iran’s latest drone hunt outing and what else should we expect from Tehran’s attempts to push back on America’s “maximum pressure” campaign?
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Red lines: Trump started the morning with a cryptic and seemingly ominous tweet that “Iran made a very big mistake!” in shooting down an American drone on Wednesday. Later in the day, it became clear that he meant it a somewhat less threatening sense. “I think probably Iran made a mistake. I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down and fortunately that drone was unarmed. There was no man in it,” he told reporters during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trump also seemed to differentiate between Iranian attacks on unmanned aircraft and U.S. troops in terms of severity, saying an attack on manned aircraft “would've made a big, big difference” in how the U.S. responded.