President Donald Trump said the U.S. has an obligation to respond to Iran after he announced that the country shot down an American helicopter on Monday.
In a post on Truth Social, the president said the strikes took down a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter that was patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. Despite a ceasefire, attacks between Israel and Iran have escalated, with Israel launching strikes into Iran and Iran launching their own in response.
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This was the second time in the war that the U.S. has confirmed Iran has taken out an American aircraft. The first happened in early April and led to a daring two-day rescue of the two pilots inside the fighter jet.
Trump also said the military successfully rescued both pilots before he threatened Iran in his social media post.
“There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
Iran responds
Following the attack, one of Iran’s top negotiators in the ongoing peace talks posted on social media, emphasizing that Iran prefers to use diplomacy but said they wouldn’t hold back if the U.S. continued to break its commitments.
“We prefer the language of diplomacy, but we speak other languages far more fluently,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X. “Break your commitments, and we’ll switch to what we speak best. You ride the horse you saddled!”
Israel has complicated the peace agreements for the Trump administration after it continued its military campaign in Lebanon. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both said Lebanon was not in the peace agreements. But Iranian negotiators insisted that any peace deal must include security agreements for Lebanon.
Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. and Iran were close to finalizing a deal to end the war, dissolve Iran’s nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But the recent loss of a more than $30 million aircraft has Trump appearing to revert to military action.
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