Trump Says Does Not Want War with Iran

"I'm not looking to do that," he said of going to war during an excerpt of an interview with NBC released Friday.

In the same sit-down, the US president also said he is willing to talk with Iran without any preconditions.

The president's comments come the same day he announced that he abruptly canceled an attack on Iran after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) shot down an intruding US drone on Thursday after it violated the country’s airspace.

Trump tweeted Friday morning that he called off the attack 10 minutes before the strike after "a general" told him that 150 people would likely be killed.

Later in the day, spokesman for the Iranian Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said Iran would respond firmly to any US aggression should it retaliate.

“The Iranian Armed Forces defended the airspace of the country and responded to the American drone’s aggression according to their inherent mission,” Keyvan Khosravi told the Russian-language Sputnik.

The US has no justification for acting against Iran over the drone’s downing, he said, adding that the Islamic Republic is fully prepared to respond to any other act of aggression decisively.

The IRGC said on Thursday that a US spy drone that violated the Iranian territorial airspace in the early hours of the day was shot down by the IRGC Aerospace Force’s air defense unit near the Kooh-e-Mobarak region in the southern province of Hormozgan.

The intruding drone was shot by Iran’s homegrown air defense missile system “Khordad-3".