radioed to the drone at 3:55 local time a.m. the iranians say they shot it down at 4:05. that would have been ten minutes before the aircraft was actually shut down. iranians are saying all this happened over international air space as that dispute continues on. the iranians, by the way, guys, not commenting yet on that new york times article that apparently a strike on iran was imminent. one of the things they ve been telling us over the past couple of days. if the u.s. does strike, there will be a painful response from the iranians. just extra info to john s point, we heard that a few international airlines are already diverting their routes to not fly over the persian gulf area. thank you very much for all of that news. joining us now john kirby and abby phillips and retired army
take, they say it happened in international air space, 20 miles off the coast and, therefore, it was an unprovoked attack. some airlines have already decided to fly different routes avoiding the persian gulf area, which is an air space that s got a lot of air traffic going through it, dave. tensions continue to escalate. fred, we ll check back with you in the 5:00 hour. thank you. earlier thursday before planned strikes broke it was falling along party lines. republican senator lindsey graham said he spoke with the president on iran wednesday night and thursday morning. he believes that we re going into a bad space, that his options are running out, that he s not going to be intimidated. top democrats on the hill,
concerned about the rising tensions, poppy, between the u.s. and iran. i ve been speaking to folks really over the past couple of days. a lot of them said, of course, they are quite concerned this could descend into some sort of war with iran. all of them are very much suffering with economic situation as well. i think one of the things for many iranians right now they re thinking about is the fact they don t really see a way out of this. they don t see these two countries and governments coming together to try and better the situation for the folks here living on the ground. it was very interesting, guys, to just hear what barbara said because i think it s something we picked up on here from what the iranians were saying as well. they gave a very detailed run-down whf what they said this drone did after the took off. they said it took off shortly after midnight and then made its way to the persian gulf area, and they said it masqueraded its
spent several years reporting from the pentagon. i don t remember. someone would make a statement, they would hang up and say if you re this is a really tense situation, right now. this situation could clearly explode. i don t think the president wants it, he s been an isolationist most of his adult life. he wants to get out of there, but ironically, despite his own intentions, in the past couple weeks, he s authorized 2500 additional u.s. troops to head to the region, whether to qatar, bahrain or saudi arabia or any place else in the region, kuwait, the u.s. has a lot of troops there. right now the u.s. has more than 70,000 troops in the persian gulf area. plus another tens of thousands of civilian contractors a lot of diplomats, there are a lot of american families right now who are looking at what s going on in that part of the world, who are beginning to get very nervous, because despite what the president wants, i don t think he wants to go to war.
fred, nothing to worry about here. reporter: yeah, i think quite a lot to worry about right now, christine. certainly if you look at the situation here in the persian gulf area between the u.s. and iran, there s a bit of a dispute as to where this drone was apparently shot down. as you mentioned, the u.s. says that it was in international air space above straight of hormuz. the iranians were saying 2459 drone actually violated their air space and was somewhat south of the straight of hormuz. they re putting it over iranian territory. i have a little breaking news for you guys because the head of iran s revolutionary guard corps came out a couple of minutes ago. this is the unit that apparently shot this drone down. he says it s a clear warning to the united states and he also says that iran s air space and its territorial integrity are red lines that anybody who surpasses them or transgresses them will not come back. so it s a pretty bellicose