Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would likely die in the attack.

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues from the sale of oil, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.