sorted by:
"The commander explained that the incident had occurred as the country was bracing for potential US strikes and that the “likelihood of conflict” between the two nations has been “unprecedented” since the Islamic Revolution of 1979."
If he's not just a continent fall guy then it's completely reasonable that he's been fed just as much fake news about the US by the State controlled Iranian media as US citizens get fed by corporations.
This is simply the predictable evolution of fake news driven paranoia, similar things happened during the cold war and it was memory-holed because there was no social media to dig into it and do the job that journalists (as they used to be) and churnalists (as they are now) were/are unable or unwilling to do.
So well put!