THE NEW YORK TIMES: US strikes Iran after American army helicopter downed near Strait of Hormuz

The United States carried out airstrikes against several military targets in Iran on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump vowed to retaliate for what he said was Iran’s downing of a US Army helicopter gunship patrolling near the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement, US Central Command said that the “self-defence” strikes carried out on Mr Trump’s order were “a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

Central Command later said that Air Force and Navy jets had struck Iranian air defences, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s state television reported explosions and air defence sirens early Wednesday at several military installations, radars and artillery batteries along Iran’s southern Persian Gulf coast, including Bandar Abbas, Qeshm and Sirik. The scale of damage was not immediately clear.

Iran then said that it had launched drone strikes against the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, where the Bahrain government reported that warning sirens had been activated. Iran also said it had launched 21 attacks on US bases in the region, including in Jordan, but US Central Command said that was not the case.

A US official said Iran launched multiple missiles and drones at US bases in the Middle East, and nearly all were intercepted, according to initial American assessments. There were no reports of American casualties, and no reports as yet of damage to US bases in the region from the Iranian attacks, the official said.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr Trump warned that strikes were coming after two aviators aboard the downed Apache helicopter were rescued.

“I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote on social media. “There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

Mr Trump did not say how the Iranians brought down the helicopter, but a US official later said a one-way Iranian Shahed attack drone hit the Apache late Monday and caused it to plunge into the sea, confirming an earlier report by Axios.

A second US official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the two crew members were “lucky” to have survived the crash. Apaches do not have ejection seats. As darkness fell in the region, the aviators were rescued by a remotely piloted Navy sea drone, in what is believed to be the first operation of its kind, military officials said.

After Mr Trump vowed to retaliate, US officials drew up plans for what they deemed a proportional response that would avoid derailing the tenuous ceasefire and upending fitful talks between Washington and Tehran to open the strait.

The plans included options to strike the bases and sites in Iran that launched the drone that hit the helicopter. Officials said the intent was to respond but not escalate the situation.

Hostilities in the region had flared and then ebbed in recent days, as Israel and Iran exchanged military strikes before stepping back. In a sign of how precarious US officials viewed the security situation, one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said military investigators were trying to determine whether in the congested air space off the Omani coast, the Iranian drone hit the Apache on purpose or in a reckless accident.

The military’s Central Command confirmed in a statement on Tuesday morning that an Apache helicopter gunship had gone down on Monday night while patrolling regional waters, and that the two crew members were safely recovered within about two hours of the crash. But Central Command did not say how the crash happened and said the incident was under investigation.

The Trump administration had not publicly acknowledged that an Apache had crashed, with the two crew members rescued, until The New York Times reported on the incident Monday night.

By Tuesday morning, Central Command wanted to talk only about the unusual rescue of the two Army aviators — the pilot and the gunner — and not the possible causes of the crash, including whether Iran had shot down an AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship, bristling with Hellfire missiles and one of the most formidable US attack aircraft in the region.

Captain Tim Hawkins, a Central Command spokesperson, said in a text message on Tuesday that the US Navy deployed a sea drone — a 24-foot Navy Corsair made by Saronic Technologies — to help rescue the two crew members.

“The drone picked them up and transported them to another location on the water where they were then hoisted up to a helicopter for further transport,” Capt. Hawkins said. Central Command first fielded the Corsair in March, shortly after the war with Iran began, he added.

US military commanders have been using Apache helicopters to patrol the waters in and around the Strait of Hormuz in part to deter small-boat attacks and to shoot down Iranian drones.

The gunships have also been pushing closer to Iranian territory — including Iranian-controlled islands in the strait and the Persian Gulf — as part of the US military’s aggressive posture in the region. The military has also used armed MQ-9 Reaper drones and F/A-18 and F-35 warplanes to challenge Iran’s control of the strait, which it has effectively closed.

Iran has shot down about 30 unmanned Reaper drones, and a handful of US fighter jets have been lost to hostile and friendly fire since the war started on February 28. In April, Iran shot down an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet over its territory, prompting the two crew members to eject from their stricken aircraft. Both were rescued.

But this would be the first Apache helicopter lost in the conflict, military specialists said. The aircraft cost about $US25 million ($35m) each, analysts said. Military specialists debated on Tuesday whether a Shahed drone was capable of hitting a moving target, adding credence to the possibility the incident was an accident.

Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said it was possible that Iran possessed a new variant of a Shahed drone modified by the Russians to include a remote guidance system.

“The basic Shahed drone was GPS-guided, which made it unsuitable for hitting a mobile target like a ship or aircraft,” said Mr Cancian, referring to satellite-guided systems. “There have been reports that Russia sent some drones to Iran. This would indicate that Iran has some drones with those Russian developed capabilities.”

In response to Iran’s blockade of the strait, the US military has since April 13 enforced a blockade on ships entering and leaving Iranian ports. The US military has turned away 134 vessels and disabled seven others that were violating the blockade, Central Command said. The latest was a Palau-flagged oil tanker that was sailing in international waters in the Gulf of Oman toward Iran on Monday.

An F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from the USS Abraham Lincoln fired into the tanker’s engineering and steering spaces, stopping the ship after, Central Command said, it ignored US warnings to turn back.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.