President Trump says 'Iran appears to be standing down'

The President's remarks set out no basic change from an administration strategy that has sharply ratcheted up tensions over the last year, putting the region on edge and bringing the US and Iran to the brink of war in the first days of the new year.

"The United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime," Trump said, noting his administration is continuing to review other options to respond to the Iranian missile strike on Tuesday.
"These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior," he added. "In recent months alone, Iran has seized ships in international waters, fired an unprovoked strike on Saudi Arabia and shot down two American drones."

In short, Trump said that Iran appears to be standing down after the attack which only caused minimal damage. Trump said no lives were lost, in part due to precautions that were taken as well as an early warning system that worked very well.

Trump seemed to be signaling that the US would not retaliate and called on Iran to de-escalate tensions and come to the negotiating table. Trump will impose more sanctions and ask NATO to become more involved in the Middle East.

Trump also pointed out that the missiles that were fired in last night’s attack were paid for by money that was made available to Iran from the Obama administration. Watch the video above for more.

In related news, I reported this morning that Iran warned Iraq of the attacks before they happened. Since then I’ve also found reporting that suggests Iraq then tipped off the US about the attack as well, allowing them to take cover:

“An Arab diplomatic source told CNN that Iraq gave advance warning to the United States on “which bases would be hit” after Iranian officials passed on the information.

A US defense official said Iraqis were told by Iran to stay away from certain bases.”

US officials also confirmed to USA Today that they did have advance warning of the attack, writing “U.S. officials had advance warning of Iran’s missile assault that damaged two Iraqi bases housing U.S. and coalition forces, a U.S. official told USA TODAY.”