‘The danger is there’: War between US and Iran now ‘highly likely’

President Donald Trump says Iran made a “very big mistake!” by shooting down a US military drone as one of Australia’s leading Middle East authorities warns the risk of war between the two countries is imminent.

Iran’s Revolution Guard on Thursday announced it had shot down a US drone amid heightened tensions between the two countries following Mr Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal put in place by Barak Obama’s administration in 2015.

When asked about a US response to the strike by reporters on Friday morning, Mr Trump  repeatedly said: “You’ll find out.”

Facing the media during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Mr Trump said: “I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down.”

Iran, meanwhile, called US-imposed sanctions against its country “economic terrorism,” insisted the drone had invaded its airspace and said it would take its case to the United Nations.

Last week the US blamed Iran for attacks on two oil tankers that were disabled in the Gulf of Oman.

The Middle Eastern country denies the accusations and is threatening to break the uranium stockpile limit set by world powers in the 2015 deal.

The country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it shot down the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone after it entered Iranian airspace in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province.

Read the article by Cait Kelly in The New Daily.