-Early morning on June 20, a U.S. Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk drone
was shot down near Iran's southern coast.
Iran claims the drone had violated Iranian airspace
when it was shot down, while the United States insists
that the drone was in international airspace.
-I don't know.
I find it hard to believe it was intentional,
if you want to know the truth.
I think that it could have been somebody
who was loose and stupid.
-So what happened in the early hours of June 20?
According to the Pentagon, the U.S. surveillance drone
came under fire at 3:35 a.m. local time.
The Iranian military
said it sent multiple warnings to the drone.
The final warning, Iran said,
was issued at 3:55 a.m. local time.
-Multiple warning had been given to this aircraft in two stages.
-Iran did not specify how it sent the message.
At 4:05 a.m., Iran said the drone was shot down.
-Global Hawk is a military-intelligence
reconnaissance craft.
It collects intelligence with images
and also electronic intelligence.
And quite likely,
Global Hawk is being engaged in military tactical reconnaissance
to update attack plans
so that if the President decides to order a strike,
those plan have the absolute best information
that our intelligence community,
military intelligence can provide.
-But the Pentagon and Iranian military released maps
that they claimed showed the drone's path.
According to both sources, the drone generally appears
to have flown around the Strait of Hormuz,
down, and then looped back around.
The discrepancy takes place at this particular point.
According to the U.S., the drone was continuing on its course
over international waters when it was shot down.
According to Iran,
the drone swerved into Iranian sovereign airspace
before a missile took it down.
-My thought is that the drone incident is a miscalculation.
Whether it's a miscalculation because the United States
moved a Global Hawk into an environment
where it was vulnerable
or whether it was a miscalculation
because as the United States moved the Global Hawk,
inching toward Iranian space, if not over it,
the Iranians overreacted and shot it down.
Either way,
it doesn't really matter who's ultimately to blame.
This is a witch's brew,
where a miscalculation of some kind
is just quite likely to happen.
And that's what we observed.
-On maps of this area, there are borders
marking Iranian sovereign airspace.
-The airspace of a country that is considered sovereign airspace
is roughly the same as what's considered sovereign waters,
which is about 12 nautical miles off the shoreline.
-And then there are borders marking an airspace
called the Flight Information Region, also known as FIR.
-So, the Flight Information Region is an area of airspace
that is divided amongst regions
so that there is air-traffic control responsibility.
-The location of the drone's downing,
according to the Pentagon's coordinates,
sits right on the line of Tehran's FIR boundary.
Although this area,
which sits just west of the sovereign airspace,
is regulated by Iran,
it is generally considered to be international airspace.
-It might be helpful to think about this as rush-hour traffic.
That is the situation that we're facing here
in the Strait of Hormuz.
You have some lines on the road.
Some are a little vague. Some aren't so clear.
But you have an enormous amount of rush-hour traffic
now occurring as a result of weeks of crisis behavior.
It is a situation made for miscalculation,
made for accidental collisions.
-After the drone incident,
President Trump confirmed reports
that he had ordered an attack on Iran in retaliation,
but called off the strike at the last minute.
Iran also said the military had refrained from shooting down
a U.S. P-8 Patrol aircraft with 35 people on board
that Iranian officials claimed was accompanying the drone.
The presence of the plane with the drone has not been verified.
-The good news
is that what we've seen out of the White House,
and particularly President Trump,
is an effort to take this miscalculation
and de-escalate from here.
I would also say on the part of the Iranians,
they have announced that there was a manned military aircraft
by the United States that they could have shot down
that they did not.
That's a sign of restraint on their part.
And it's a moment to pause.
This miscalculation, like an accident in a traffic jam,
or in rush-hour traffic, is a moment to pause.
And it's a moment to really think through
whether we really want to go down this road
of a still bigger collision or whether we want an off-ramp.
-After the incident, the FAA issued an emergency order
banning U.S. carriers from flying over the region,
citing the possibility
of miscalculation or misidentification.
