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President Trump announces that a US Navy ship shot down an Iranian drone on Thursday morning
Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Trump announces that a US Navy ship shot down an Iranian drone on Thursday morning

The incident happened in the crucial shipping lane in the Strait of Hormuz

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the USS Boxer had shot down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz.

Here's what we know

"The Boxer took defensive action against an Iranian drone," Trump told reporters, "which had closed into a near distance, approximately 1,000 yards, ignoring multiple calls to stand down threatening safety of ship and ship's crew."

Trump said that the drone was "immediately destroyed."

The incident reportedly happened at around 10 a.m. local time Thursday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, which opens up into the Arabian Sea. The Pentagon said the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, was in international waters at the time "conducting a planned inbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz."

This is the same strait where on July 10, a British warship had to stop an attempt by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to seize a British oil tanker.

According to the Pentagon's version of events:

A fixed wing unmanned aerial system (UAS) approached Boxer and closed within a threatening range. The ship took defensive action against the UAS to ensure the safety of the ship and its crew.

Trump also said that the U.S. "reserves [the] right to defend our personnel, facilities, condemn iran's attempts to disrupt freedom of navigation and global commerce."

What else?

Last month, Iran shot down an unmanned U.S. drone. Iran claimed that the drone was flying in Iranian airspace, while the U.S. has insisted that it never left international airspace.

Trump initially decided to launch a strike against Iran in retaliation for the drone's destruction, but said he called it off at the last minute after learning how many Iranian casualties would result.

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