A top Iranian general said on Sunday that the United States conveyed to the Islamic Republic through an unnamed third party last month that it would carry out limited strikes to retaliate for the downing of its drone.
“After the downing of its intruding drone, the United States told us through diplomatic intermediaries that it wanted to carry out a limited operation,” said Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization and senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
“But Iran’s response was that we regard every operation as the beginning of the war,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
Last month, Trump declared that “Iran made a very big mistake” by shooting down the US drone over the Strait of Hormuz. But he also suggested that shooting down the drone was a foolish error rather than an intentional escalation of the tensions.
The US military made preparations on June 21 for limited strikes on Iran in retaliation for the downing of a US surveillance drone — which Washington insists was over international waters but Tehran says was within its airspace — but approval was abruptly withdrawn before the attacks were launched.
Trump later said the US was “cocked and loaded” to retaliate against Iran, but canceled the strikes 10 minutes before they were to be carried out after being told some 150 people could die.
“I didn’t think it was proportionate,” he said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.
Reuters reported at the time that Trump had urged Iran to come to the table to hold talks in a message conveyed through Oman, and warned that a US strike against the Islamic Republic in response to the drone incident could be imminent.
The aborted attack was the closest the US has come to a direct military strike on Iran in the year since the administration pulled out of the 2015 international agreement intended to curb the Iranian nuclear program and launched a campaign of increasing economic pressure against the Islamic Republic.
A year after Trump pulled the US from the deal, Iran already has broken through the limit the deal put on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. On Sunday, officials announced they would enrich beyond its 3.67 percent limit “in a few hours.”
All this comes as America has rushed thousands of troops, an aircraft carrier, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and advanced fighter jets to the Mideast. Mysterious oil tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz that the US and Israel blamed on Iran, attacks by Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen on Saudi Arabia and Iran shooting down a US military drone have raised fears of a wider conflict engulfing the region.
WarSclerotic 
July 7, 2019 at 9:41 PM
Ken Cohen [editor of Facts and Logic
about the Middle East (FLAME)] said:
Last year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman reportedly stated in a closed-door
meeting that “Palestinians should accept
peace or shut up and stop complaining.”
SOURCE:
Why are Arab states rejecting the Palestinian cause?
by Ken Cohen, 2019 July 2
http://www.jns.org/opinion/why-are-arab-states-rejecting-the-palestinian-cause/
July 7, 2019 at 9:43 PM
Nikki Haley (former USA Ambassador to the United Nations):
“The number of actual Palestinian refugees is classified.
There are multiple people working to get it unclassified.”
SOURCE: The better and stronger
we make Israel, the safer we make the world
by Dr. Miriam Adelson, 2019 June 28
http://www.jns.org/nikki-haley-the-better-and-stronger-we-make-israel-the-safer-we-make-the-world/
July 7, 2019 at 9:44 PM
“As Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch has documented, P.A. [Palestinian Authority] leaders are backing the decision to continue payments to terrorists and their families, even if it comes at the expense of ordinary, law-abiding Palestinian citizens.”
SOURCE: As world leaders gathered
in Bahrain, PA continued to prioritize ‘pay for slay’
https://www.jns.org/as-world-leaders-gathered-in-bahrain-pa-continued-to-prioritize-pay-for-slay/
July 8, 2019 at 3:32 AM
Mr. Ariel Ben Solomon said:
“During the past year-and-a-half, he [Yigal Carmon] explained, MEMRI concentrated on monitoring sermons by imams [Muslim preachers] across America.
The results from a random sample of over 100 imams, he said, were shocking.
The sermons were laced with incitement to kill Jews, support for global jihad and hard-core misogyny.
A few imams, he said, preached tolerance and coexistence, but they were a small minority.”
SOURCE: Supremacists and Jihadis form
two-pronged attack threatening Jews in USA
by Ariel Ben Solomon, 2019 June 26
http://www.jns.org/memri-adds-white-supremacism-to-its-research-of-the-jihadi-threat/
July 8, 2019 at 3:33 AM
Mr. John Rossomando said:
“[IUMS Trustee Sheikh Hassan Ould] Aldo and
the [Muslim] Brotherhood use language similar
to what Hamas used in its original charter,
which rejected any peaceful coexistence.
To them, Palestine is part of a waqf, a holy
Islamic trust, that no person can negotiate away.”
SOURCE: Muslim Brotherhood,
Hamas: No Peace as Long as Israel Exists
by Mr. John Rossomando, 2019 July 1
http://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/01/muslim-brotherhood-hamas-no-peace-as-long-as-israel-exists/