https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
From the article:
The president’s description of his decision-making process, unorthodox for previous presidents, was part of a day of shifting stories and contradictory statements that made it difficult to resolve outstanding questions about how the confrontation unfolded.
Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who frequently talks to Mr. Trump, said Friday that he was told the Iranians privately expressed frustration to the United States about an Iranian tactical commander who went too far in firing the missile that took down the American drone.
“They’re frustrated and furious with what happened,” Mr. Keane said.
But that was contradicted in public statements on Friday from Iranian officials, who insisted they purposely took the drone down to send Americans a message.
On Friday, another conflicting narrative continued: the dispute over the location of the drone when it was shot down.
Iranian government officials released photographs on Friday morning of what they said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran continued to insist it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.
To bolster its claims, Iran had released video late Thursday of what it said was the moment the drone was shot down. A top Iranian commander also claimed on Twitter on Friday that a second American aircraft — a surveillance plane capable of carrying 35 passengers and crew members — had violated Iranian airspace. But he said the Iranian military chose not to shoot it down.
“We did not do this. Because our goal was to warn Americans,” wrote Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
American officials countered Iran’s claims with images of the drone’s flight path that they insisted showed it had never entered Iranian airspace. The images offered little context and initially included an incorrect description of the drone’s flight path.
On Friday night, the Pentagon confirmed the presence of a second surveillance aircraft, a Navy P-8A Poseidon, which officials said took photographs of the drone being shot down.
But a senior Trump administration official said there was concern inside the United States government about whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, or even the P-8A manned aircraft flown by a military aircrew, actually did violate Iranian airspace at some point. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike.