Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump threatened Thursday to hit Iran "very hard" if Tehran's involvement was confirmed in the mid-flight stabbing attack on the pilot of a Flydubai flight, with Israel pointing to "Islamist indoctrination" of the co-pilot.

Published on: 02/10/2026 - 05:12

“They will be hit very hard, don't worry,” said the American president when a journalist asked him if the United States would respond in the event that Tehran's responsibility was demonstrated.

Two days after the emergency landing in Saudi Arabia of the plane which linked Dubai to Tel Aviv with 174 people on board, including 166 Israelis according to the media, the profile and motivations of the suspect remain unclear.

According to travellers' accounts, he stabbed the captain to cause the plane to crash, causing a loss of altitude of around 5,000 meters in a minute, before passengers rushed into the cockpit to subdue him.

Without waiting for the results of ongoing investigations, Israel denounced an “attempted jihadist terrorist attack”, targeting in particular the Emirates and the Abraham Accords which normalized relations between the two countries in 2020.

During an exchange with the press at the White House, Donald Trump said he believed Iran was involved. “I would say the answer is yes, based on what I'm hearing, but we're working on that as we speak,” he said.

Reinforcements

The United States has not struck Iran since September 1, although ships are regularly targeted in the Strait of Hormuz. But no diplomatic outcome seems in sight between Washington and Tehran, more than seven months after the launch of the Israeli-American offensive on the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with Time magazine published Thursday, Donald Trump considered it "possible" to intensify attacks against Iran after the mid-term legislative elections in early November.

Two US aircraft carriers are already in the Middle East, it is not clear whether the number will increase to three or whether the vessel due to arrive will replace one of those there.

And according to the media Axios, which cites official American sources, the United States also recently sent two additional batteries of Patriot anti-missile missiles to protect oil and gas installations in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The suspect transferred

Speaking for the first time on the Flydubai flight, Saudi authorities confirmed on Thursday that the co-pilot had attacked his colleague, without giving further information about his motives.

They specified that the suspect had been transferred to the United Arab Emirates where the attorney general, cited by state media, announced an investigation to determine "to what extent the incident is linked to terrorist activity or intention."

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not rule out the possibility of an act linked to psychiatric problems, the co-pilot, of Omani nationality, "had undergone radical Islamist indoctrination".

"He shouted 'kill me kill me', okay. So it is clear that he was suicidal (...) It is clear that he intended to crash the plane,” he said on the American channel Fox News.

Upon arrival in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, passengers described a nightmarish flight. “We heard screams in the plane. Afterwards, they opened the cockpit and we saw blood, and that someone had stabbed the pilot with a knife,” a passenger testified to Israeli television.

Yaniv Hayoun, a plumber, said he kicked the co-pilot out of the cockpit, before righting the plane using piloting skills learned from watching television. His photo, in an outfit stained with the assailant's blood, made the front pages of several newspapers in Israel on Thursday.

The injured Indian captain, Smit Machchlar, was transferred from Saudi Arabia to the UAE where he is in "good health and recovering well", according to the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi.

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© 2026 AFP

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