President Donald Trump says the Flydubai cockpit stabbing may have a link to Iran, but the Israeli officials running the investigation have not made that claim. The Trump comment came "in just the last few hours" before NBC News NOW's broadcast on Oct. 1, anchor Yasmin Vossoughian said.
The recap: a Flydubai pilot apparently stabbed his co-pilot on a flight from Dubai bound for Israel. Vossoughian said it looks like it could have been an act of terror.
The new development is where the two men are. Saudi Arabia's government said on Oct. 1 that the attacker and the stabbed pilot have been moved from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, where the flight took off. NBC News correspondent Raf Sanchez, reporting from Tel Aviv, said the attacker appears set to be interrogated there.
Developing — unverified: Trump's Iran link and Netanyahu's account of the attacker's goal. Neither has independent corroboration in the NBC broadcast.
Sanchez said Trump is describing a "possible connection to Iran." He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been "much more muted" and that NBC is not hearing an Iran allegation from the Israeli side.
An unnamed Israeli official gave NBC a different picture. Israeli officials describe the pilot as suicidal and likely radicalized. The official said: "We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination."
I think it's too early to say whether he had any connections with Iran or with anyone else.
Netanyahu says the attacker, a citizen of Oman, adopted a radical Islamist ideology. He says the man attempted a 9/11-style attack, aiming to crash the plane and kill the roughly 180 people aboard, most of them Israelis. A CBS correspondent put the number at 174.
Sanchez said it is "increasingly becoming clear" why the plan failed. The stabbed co-pilot managed to open the cockpit door a crack. Passengers surged in, overpowered the attacker, and the plane was eventually leveled out.
The co-pilot, Indian captain Smith Mutscher, is being called a hero. NBC footage shows him leaving the plane covered in blood. India's prime minister says he stopped what could have been another 9/11-style attack.
Two questions remain open, per Sanchez: how the attacker got a knife onto the plane and into the cockpit, and what motivated him. The man who can answer both is now in UAE custody.