WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday, threatening to ramp up tensions as the Trump administration warns of possible military action to get Iran to the negotiating table.
The drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and kept flying toward it "despite de-escalatory measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters,” Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said in a statement.
The shootdown occurred within hours of Iranian forces harassing a U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed merchant vessel that was sailing in the Strait of Hormuz, the American military said.
The developments could escalate the heightened tensions between the longtime adversaries as President Donald Trump has threatened to use military action first over Iran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests and then to try to get the country to make a deal over its nuclear program. Trump's Republican administration has built up military forces in the region, sending the aircraft carrier, guided-missile destroyers, air defense assets and more to supplement its presence.
The Shahed-139 drone was shot down by an F-35C fighter jet from the Lincoln, which was sailing about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Iran’s southern coast, Hawkins said. No American troops were harmed, and no U.S. equipment was damaged, the military’s statement noted.
Talks between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian officials are still planned, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
“President Trump is always wanting to pursue diplomacy first, but obviously it takes two to tango,” Leavitt said. She added, “As always, though, of course, the president has a range of options on the table with respect to Iran.”
Hours before the drone was shot down, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on Telegram that he had spoken with his counterparts in Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey and Oman regarding regional developments and the importance of protecting “regional stability and security.”
After the shootdown, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard forces harassed the merchant vessel Stena Imperative, the U.S. military said. Two boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the ship “at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker,” Hawkins’ statement said.
The destroyer USS McFaul responded and escorted the Stena Imperative “with defensive air support from the U.S. Air Force,” the statement said, adding that the merchant vessel was now sailing safely.
Tensions began to rise again between the U.S. and Iran as the Islamic Republic spent weeks quelling protests that began in late December against growing economic instability before broadening into a challenge to the country's ruling theocracy.
Trump had promised in early January to “rescue” Iranians from their government's protest crackdown before starting to pressure Tehran again to make a deal over its nuclear program. That is even as the Republican president insists Iranian nuclear sites were “obliterated” in U.S. strikes in June.
“We have talks going on with Iran. We’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.
“I’d like to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that’d be great. And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.”
Iran’s president said Tuesday that he instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the U.S., marking one of the first clear signs from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate with Washington despite a breakdown of talks last summer.
Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as Witkoff is traveling in the region. A Turkish official later said the location of talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has been moving a growing number of assets into the region over the past several weeks, including the Lincoln and several destroyers, which arrived last week.
The carrier strike group, which brought roughly 5,700 additional service members, joined three destroyers and three littoral combat ships that were already in the region.
Analysts of flight-tracking data also have noticed dozens of U.S. military cargo planes heading to the region.
The activity is similar to last year when the U.S. moved in air defense hardware, like a Patriot missile system, in anticipation of an Iranian counterattack following the U.S. bombing three key nuclear sites. Iran launched more than a dozen missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar days after the strikes.
The U.S. has several bases in the Middle East, including Al Udeid, which hosts thousands of American troops and is the forward headquarters for U.S. Central Command.
Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
FILE - The Pentagon, the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Defense, is seen from the air, Sept. 20, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, FIle)
The brutally frigid weather that has gripped most of America for the past 11 days is not unprecedented. It just feels that way.
The first quarter of the 21st century was unusually warm by historical standards – mostly due to human-induced climate change – and so a prolonged cold spell this winter is unfamiliar to many people, especially younger Americans.
Because bone-shattering cold occurs less frequently, Americans are experiencing it more intensely now than they did in the past, several experts in weather and behavior said. But the longer the current icy blast lasts – sub-freezing temperatures are forecast to stick around in many places — the easier it should become to tolerate.
“We adapt, we get used to things. This is why your first bite of dessert is much more satisfying than your 20th bite,” Hannah Perfecto, who studies consumer behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote in an email. “The same is true for unpleasant experiences: Day 1 of a cold snap is much more a shock to the system than Day 20 is.”
Charlie Steele, a 78-year-old retired federal worker in Saugerties, New York, considers himself a lover of cold weather. In the recent past, he has gone outside in winter wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and has even walked barefoot in the snow. But this January's deep-freeze is “much, much colder than anything I can remember," he said.
Steele's sense of change is backed up data.
There have been four fewer days of subfreezing temperatures in the U.S. per year, on average, between 2001 and 2025 than there were in the previous 25 years, according to data from Climate Central. The data from more than 240 weather stations also found that spells of subfreezing temperatures have become less widespread geographically and haven’t lasted as long — until this year.
In Albany, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Steele, the change has been more pronounced than the national average, with 11 fewer subfreezing days in the last 25 years than the previous quarter century.
“You're out of practice,” Steele said. “You're kind of lulled into complacency.”
Climate change has shifted what people are used to, said several climate scientists, including Daniel Swain of the University of California's Water Resources Institute.
“It’s quite possible that for anybody under the age of 30, in some spots this may well be the coldest week of their life,” Swain said.
Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said, “humans get used to all kinds of things -- city noise, stifling heat, lies from politicians, and winter cold. So when a ‘normal’ cold spell does come along, we feel it more acutely.”
People forget how extreme cold feels after just two to eight years of milder winters, according to a 2019 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Americans have gone through a much longer stretch than that.
Over the past 30 years, the average daily low in the continental U.S. has dropped below 10 degrees (minus 12 degrees Celsius) 40 times, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But in the preceding 30 years, that chilly threshold was reached 124 times.
“People have forgotten just how cold it was in the 20th century,” Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler said.
Their wake-up call came late last month, when the country's average daily low dipped below 10 degrees three times in one week.
Regardless of how it feels, extremely cold weather presents dangers. People and vehicles slip on ice, power can go down, leaving people freezing in homes, and storms limit visibility, making commuting to work or even doing basic errands, potentially perilous. More than 110 deaths have been connected to the winter storms and freezing temperatures since January.
As this winter's frigid days stretch on, people adapt. University of San Diego psychiatrist Thomas Rutledge said people shake off what he calls their “weather rustiness.”
Rutledge explained what he meant via email, recalling the period decades ago when he lived in Alaska. “I assumed that everyone was a good driver in winter conditions. How couldn’t they be with so much practice?" he wrote. "But what I annually observed was that there was always a large spike in car accidents in Alaska after (the) first big snowfall hit. Rather than persistent skills, it seemed that the 4-6 months of spring and summer was enough for peoples’ winter driving skills to rust enough to cause accidents.”
That's Alaska. This cold snap hit southern cities such as Dallas and Miami, where it's not just the people unaccustomed to the cold. Utilities and other basic infrastructure are also ill-equipped to handle the extreme weather, said Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
While this ongoing cold snap may feel unusually long to many Americans, it isn't, according to data from 400 weather stations across the continental U.S. with at least a century of record-keeping, as tracked by the Southeast Regional Climate Center.
Only 33 of these weather stations have recorded enough subzero temperatures (minus 18 degrees Celsius) since the start of 2026 to be in the top 10% of the coldest first 32 days of any year over the past century.
When Steele moved to the Hudson Valley as a toddler in 1949, the average daily low temperature over the previous 10 winters was 14.6 degrees (minus 9.7 degrees Celsius). In the past 10 years, the average daily low was 20.8 degrees (minus 6.2 degrees Celsius).
As a younger man, Steele used to hunt in winter and sit for hours on cold rocks.
“I could never do that now,” he said. “I’m rusty. I’m out of practice.”
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FILE - A pedestrian crosses the street near Radio City Music Hall during a winter storm Jan. 25, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)
FILE - Vehicles travel eastbound on Interstate 20 near a sign advising motorists of icy conditions during a winter storm Jan. 24, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
FILE - A person carries grocery bags up a residential street during a winter storm Jan. 25, 2026, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)
FILE - Rafael Tavares digs his car, which was encased about 20 inches of snow, during a winter storm Jan. 26, 2026, in Lawrence, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
FILE - Pedestrians walk down Fifth Avenue during a winter storm Jan. 25, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)
FILE - Carrie Hampton tries to navigate a snowy intersection without spilling her coffee in New York, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
