Former Pentagon advisor Jason Israel says “if you sift through what Trump’s strategic goal might be from his language over the last year or two, one has been to keep Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, and the other is Iran supporting terrorism around the world.” US officials said they are "confident" the Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed in Tehran - killing all 176 passengers and crew on board - was shot down by an Iranian missile.
Iran refused to hand over the aircraft's black box to Boeing or US authorities amid ongoing tensions between the two nations. One US official said US satellites detected the launch of two missiles shortly before the plane crashed, followed by evidence of an explosion, Reuters news agency reported. Mr Israel told Sky News “Iran was not seeking loss of life, it was actually seeking loss of property and Iraq and the US had several hours of notice of what the actual target would be".