After tanker attack, Trump insists ‘Iran did do it,’ rejecting denials

ISTANBUL - President Donald Trump rejected Iran's denials Friday that it attacked two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, insisting in a television interview that "Iran did do it" and pointing to a video released by the U.S. Central Command purporting to show Iranian vessels retrieving an unexploded mine from one of the damaged ships.

Iran called the U.S. allegations against it "alarming."

In an interview on Fox News's "Fox & Friends" program, Trump said, referring to the Central Command video: "Well, Iran did do it, and you know they did do it because you saw the boat." He added, "They didn't want the evidence left behind. . . . It was them that did it."

Trump denounced Iran's leadership while also expressing interest in negotiations. "They're a nation of terror, and they've changed a lot since I've been president," he said. "They're in deep, deep trouble." He later added: "They've been told in very strong terms . . . we want to get them back to the table if they want to get back. I'm in no rush."

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the United States had "immediately jumped to make allegations against Iran - [without] a shred of factual or circumstantial evidence," and he accused the Trump White House of "economic terrorism" and "sabotage diplomacy."

The U.S. Central Command late Thursday made public a dark, grainy video and corresponding timeline suggesting that U.S. military assets in the region observed the Iranian vessels approaching the tanker and removing the device.

"At 4:10 p.m. local time an IRGC Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine" from the Courageous, said Capt. Bill Urban, a Central Command spokesman.

Senior U.S. officials showed photographs to reporters of the damaged tanker Kokuka Courageous with what the Navy identified as a suspected magnetic mine attached to its hull.

The unexploded weapon was probably applied by hand from an Iranian fast boat, one official said. It is thought to be the same kind of weapon used to blow a hole elsewhere in the same tanker and to do more-serious damage to the other ship that was targeted, the Front Altair, two officials said.

The officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity because many elements of the investigation remain secret, said the type and timing of the attacks bear Iranian hallmarks. But U.S. officials could not yet say with certainty where the mines were manufactured or exactly how they were laid.

"There's not too many ways in which this can be done," one official said. "Very few that don't involve an individual physically placing it on the ship."

Germany's government Friday called for an investigation into the "extraordinarily worrying" incident and said it had no information on who carried out the attacks, the Associated Press reported.

A "spiral of escalation" must be avoided, a spokeswoman for Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Friday in Berlin, the AP said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged restraint and said China hopes that "all sides can jointly safeguard navigational safety in the relevant waters," news agencies reported.

"Nobody wants to see war in the gulf," he said. "That is not in anyone's interest."

The two tankers, which carried petrochemicals from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf of Oman, were targeted early Thursday in what observers said marked a serious escalation in the strategic waterway, through which one-fifth of the world's oil passes. It connects energy supplies from Arab nations in the gulf, as well as Iran, to consumers around the globe.

The Courageous is a Japanese-owned vessel and was targeted as Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, met with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran.

A U.S. defense official said the USS Bainbridge, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer that was in the area, took on board 21 crew members from the ship. Iran's navy also rescued crew members from the Front Altair, a Norwegian-owned ship.

"The responsibility for the security of the Strait of Hormuz lies with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we showed that we were able to rescue the sailors of the ship as soon as possible," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said, Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The accusation against Iran, he said, is "not only not funny . . . but alarming and worrisome."

U.S. officials said several nations are consulting about how to respond. One option may be to provide military escorts for commercial tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz, one official said, although no decision has been made.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran Thursday for the "blatant assault" on the vessels and said the United States would defend itself and its allies against Iranian aggression in the region. But he provided no evidence that the explosions were the work of Iranian forces.

Pompeo said the U.S. assessment of Iranian involvement is based on intelligence, the type of weapons used and the level of expertise needed, and that no Iranian-backed militia in the region has the resources or proficiency to pull off such a sophisticated operation.

"As the threat evolves, it's incumbent on us to reevaluate our presence," said one senior U.S. official.

The U.S. military has dispatched a P-8 Poseidon, an anti-ship, anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft, to the area in response to the incident, a defense official said.

The incidents were similar to suspected acts of sabotage carried out against tankers near the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah last month and looked to be the latest salvo in the mounting confrontation between the United States and Iran. As the Trump administration has tightened economic sanctions on Iran after withdrawing last year from the historic nuclear deal, Iran and its allies have responded with calibrated attacks in the Persian Gulf area, Iraq and Saudi Arabia aimed at underscoring the potential cost to U.S. interests, including the international oil trade, experts say.

Pompeo said the impetus behind the attacks was the administration's "maximum pressure campaign" of sanctions that U.S. officials say are designed to get Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program and its support of militias in various neighboring countries.

"Our policy remains an economic and diplomatic effort to bring Iran back to the negotiating table at the right time and encourage a comprehensive deal that addresses the broad range of threats," Pompeo said. "Iran should meet diplomacy with diplomacy, not with terror, bloodshed and extortion."

But some experts say the recent tensions have underscored the limits of that policy.

In a climate of hostility, the tanker incidents could bring the parties closer to the brink of violent confrontation.

"This is a way station to a wider conflict breaking out between Iran and the United States," said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst and Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. "If Iran was behind it, it is very clear the maximum pressure policy of the Trump administration is rendering Iran more aggressive, not less."

The blasts could also reflect a widening split between pro-diplomacy officials in Iran and hard-liners opposed to further negotiations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. The branch of the Iranian military, which boasts land, air and sea forces, answers only to Khamenei and is responsible for Iran's external military operations.

Iran's security services, including the IRGC, "have a decades-long history of conducting attacks and other operations aimed precisely at undermining the diplomatic objectives of a country's elected representatives," the political risk firm Eurasia Group said in a briefing note Thursday.

"The attacks could have been designed to put an exclamation point on Iran's warnings to Abe about the risks of instability in the region," the note said. About 80 percent of Japan's oil imports come from the Middle East and pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The blasts occurred 24 nautical miles from the nearest IRGC naval base, one U.S. official said. IRGC ships are frequently present in that area but had not until recently begun to harass or impede shipping, the official said.

"It's clear that there is a pattern of Iranian naval activity in and around commercial shipping lanes that is inconsistent with their prior behavior," the official said.

The attacks are part of Iran's response to tightening U.S. sanctions, one official said. He described the Iranian view this way: "If we can't ship oil, no one can."

The Washington Post’s William Branigin, Anne Gearan and Carol Morello in Washington and Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo contributed to this report.