Trump Says Strike Would’ve Been Disproportionate

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he called off a planned retaliatory strike on Iran after deciding the likely death toll on the ground wouldn't be "proportionate" to the shoot down of a U.S. drone.

Trump tells NBC News in an interview Friday that he was informed that about 150 Iranians would be killed by the strikes.

Trump says: "I didn't like it. I didn't think it was proportionate."

The president offered a similar explanation on Twitter earlier Friday.

The president also says he never gave a final order for the operation, and that U.S. military airplanes were not yet in the air but that they would have been "pretty soon."