US special forces had to destroy two of their own planes as they completed an audacious rescue of an airman trapped behind enemy lines.
The airman, alongside a pilot, had been in an F-15 fighter jet which was shot down over a remote area of Iran on Friday.
The pilot had safely ejected and was rescued by two military helicopters the same day, but the second crew member had remained missing.
The missing crew member, who President Trump said was a highly respected Colonel, evaded pursuing Iranians for almost two days while Reaper drones overhead protected him from danger.
Armed with only a handgun to protect him, the Colonel hid from danger before making a daring dash to the rescue site.
The complex rescue mission involved hundreds of special forces personnel along with several dozen warplanes and helicopters.
A firefight broke out on the ground as Iranian forces closed in on the stricken colonel.
As they made the extraction, two of the five rescue planes became stuck in a remote airfield inside Iran and were blown up by special forces to avoid being captured by the enemy.
President Donald Trump touted the operation late Saturday night as ‘one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History’.
Iranian forces had been deceived after the CIA spread the word that US forces had already found the colonel.
The colonel was forced to hide and evade capture for a nerve wracking 36 hours deep inside Iranian territory in harsh terrain.
Iranians had been offered a $60,000 bounty for the pilot’s ‘head,’ as the regime urged locals near the crash site to seize the American.
Bombs and weapons were fired from US warplanes to keep Iranian troops away from the stranded colonel.
As US forces closed in on the stranded officer, a firefight broke out with Iranian troops.
Three rescue planes flew out of Iran to Kuwait and the mission was completed just before midnight.
President Trump confirmed that the colonel was injured but will be ‘just fine’, as he celebrated snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
Mr Trump said this was the first time in military memory that two U.S. Pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in Enemy Territory, as he defiantly said that no American warfighter would ever be left behind.
He said dozens of aircraft armed with ‘the most lethal weapons in the World’ were sent by the US military to retrieve him.
‘This brave warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour,’ Trump added in a Truth Social post.
According to Fox News, the rescue mission’s success was partly thanks to a ‘deception campaign’ launched by the CIA inside Iran.
The intelligence agency spread the word that US forces had already found the colonel and were moving him, which confused Iranian forces.
The airman ejected from an F-15E fighter jet along with the aircraft’s pilot in the early hours of Friday, sparking a frantic two-day search operation that culminated in a fierce firefight.
Trump said the aircraft’s pilot was secretly rescued hours after the crash, but that operation was kept quiet to not ‘jeopardize our second rescue operation.’
He added that both operations were concluded ‘without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded.’
Iranian media reported five people were killed in strikes during the US rescue operation.
The F-15E jet was downed on Friday soon after a US A-10 Warthog was also shot from the sky by Iranian forces in a chaotic day of fighting, marking the first US aircraft downed since the start of the conflict.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards took credit for the strike with gloating photos of the stricken planes later shared on state media, accompanied by a taunting caption.
On Saturday, the official X account for the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, released harrowing new images of the destroyed F-15E jet, accompanied by a taunting caption.
‘The stealth fighter that now has no escape but to lie under the feet of aerospace warriors,’ the embassy wrote.
‘That same stealth giant, for which they wove legends for years, is today a pile of scrap metal fallen to the ground – this is the very technology they claimed was invisible and untouchable,’ it added. ‘But now it has been seen and brought down.’
Each of the three photos showed what was left of the jet: an unrecognizable mass of burnt debris strewn across a wide, empty stretch of land.
On Friday, a video also showed Iranian bullets being fired at a Black Hawk helicopter which was thought to be involved in the search for the missing F-15 crew.
It came after Trump said earlier on Truth Social that US forces had ‘terminated’ several of Iran’s military leaders, sharing footage appearing to show an airstrike taking out top IRGC commanders.
Trump’s social media posts praising the rescue operations came hours after the White House furiously shut down rumors the president was hospitalized on Saturday.
The government said Trump not made public appearances in three days because he is focusing on the conflict with Iran.
Following the downing of two US aircrafts on Friday, Iran placed a $60,000 bounty on the heads of the US airmen, vowing to seek revenge on US military forces for the conflict.
Before the rescue mission took place, the official X account for the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, released harrowing new images of the destroyed F-15E jet, accompanied by a taunting caption.
‘The stealth fighter that now has no escape but to lie under the feet of aerospace warriors,’ the embassy wrote.
‘That same stealth giant, for which they wove legends for years, is today a pile of scrap metal fallen to the ground – this is the very technology they claimed was invisible and untouchable,’ it added. ‘But now it has been seen and brought down.’
While the pilot was rescued quickly, the second member of the crew, a Weapons Systems Officer, used specialized survival techniques to evade capture long enough to be saved, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin said in an X post on Saturday night.
The soldier used SERE – survival, evasion, resistance and escape – training to evade capture, hiking up an elevated ridge away from the wreckage and putting out an emergency beacon in hopes of being located.
Griffin said a number of Iranian military forces were killed and injured in the operation, but no US soldiers were killed.
A US official told Fox News the mission was ‘very complex’, and involved several branches of the US military to find and rescue the airman.
During search and rescue operations on Friday, two rescue helicopters were hit by Iranian forces and crew members on board were injured.
As Iranian forces closed in on the stranded airman, footage circulating on social media appeared to show members of Iran’s Bakhtiari tribes in Khuzestan heading into the mountains, rifles in hand, to search for the American soldier.
Iranians have been offered a $60,000 bounty for the pilot’s ‘head,’ while Trump declined to comment on how he would respond if the airman were to have been harmed.
Broadcasters urged locals near the crash site to seize the American, telling viewers: ‘If you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police you will receive a precious prize.’
News channels also flashed messages on screen of ‘shoot them if you see them’ and showed footage of villagers scouring a rocky hillside.
In a gloating online statement, Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf taunted the US and Trump over his repeated claims of winning the war.
‘After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from “regime change” to “Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?”’ Ghalibaf wrote.
The announcement of the rescue came as Iran launched missiles and drones at Israel and Kuwait early Sunday, and a day after Trump said the Islamic republic had 48 hours to cut a deal or face ‘all Hell’.
The President referred to an ultimatum he issued on March 26, saying: ‘Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT, Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign (sic) down on them.’
Iran’s central military command rejected the ultimatum, with General Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi saying Trump’s threat was a ‘helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action’.
Echoing Trump’s language, he warned that ‘the gates of hell will open for you’.
Pakistan has offered to mediate efforts to end the war, and according to Iranian media Pakistan’s foreign minister and his Iranian counterpart spoke by phone on Saturday.
However there was no sign of a let up in the violence, and Kuwait and Israel said their air defences were responding Sunday to the latest attacks from Iran.
The United Arab Emirates also said its air defences were responding to missile attacks that Tehran said were targeting the country’s aluminium industries, while Bahrain officials reported a fire at a refinery ‘as a result of Iranian aggression’.
