U.S. forces safely rescued the second F-15E crew member of a fighter jet that went down over Iran on Friday, two U.S. officials said late Saturday.
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President Donald Trump said the rescue was “an Easter miracle” in a text message to NBC News and praised U.S. forces for their “strong, decisive” actions.
“The Iranians thought they had him, but it wasn’t even close,” he said. “And remember, we got two, but couldn’t talk about the first in that it would have highlighted that there was a second.”
The U.S. officials said late Saturday that the second airman was pulled from Iran safely, with rescue crews also out of harm’s way.
Trump said in a separate post on Truth Social that the airman was “seriously wounded,” adding that he is a “highly respected Colonel.” A news conference will take place Monday afternoon, he added.
The plane’s pilot was located shortly after the crash.
A senior Trump administration official told NBC News that the second crew member’s rescue was made possible with the help of CIA subterfuge.
The CIA first launched a deception campaign inside Iran, saying U.S. forces had already found the airman alive and were moving him on the ground to remove him from the country, the official said.
“While the Iranians were confused and uncertain of what was happening, the Agency used its unique, exquisite capabilities to search for — and find — the American,” the official said in a statement. “This was the ultimate ‘needle in a haystack,’ but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but for CIA’s capabilities.”
The CIA immediately alerted the Defense Department and the White House of the crew member’s location, with Trump ordering an immediate rescue mission “which the DoW executed with boldness and precision, with CIA continuing to provide real time information,” the official said, using an initialism for Department of War, the administration’s unofficial renaming of the Defense Department.
The F-15E strike happened as Trump and his administration have been heavily criticized over the war. On Saturday, Trump characterized the rescue as a major triumph in the effort.
“The United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History,” he said.
He credited his military leaders for their diligence and said he ordered “dozens” of aircraft with lethal weapons to join the search.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he said.
Iran’s armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps both said multiple U.S. aircraft were destroyed during the rescue operation, Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency and the state media outlet IRNA reported. A spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said Sunday that two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and a C-130 transport aircraft were destroyed.
Fars cited a military spokesperson claiming the attempt to rescue the downed fighter pilot failed, accusing Trump of trying to create confusion.
U.S. rescue crews and other special operations forces had been searching for the second airman, known as the backseater or weapons systems officer, since Friday.
Iran shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle on Friday, with the first crew member rescued the same day. The American military was scrambling to find the second aviator after official and semiofficial Iranian news organizations reported that a regional governor had offered a bounty for its crew. A representative of merchants and businesses was reportedly offering the equivalent of $60,000 for the Americans.
It appears to be the first time that a U.S. aircraft has gone down inside Iran as part of war, dispelling the notion that the U.S. has complete control over the Iranian airspace.
Iran’s media published photos alongside claims from the Revolutionary Guard that it had shot down the F-15E. Nour News, an outlet linked to the Revolutionary Guard, said the jet “was destroyed in the skies over central Iran by a new advanced air defense system of the IRGC Aerospace Force.”
In recent days, the U.S. has ramped up the number of bombing runs over the country.
In a brief phone interview Friday, Trump was asked whether Iran’s takedown of the aircraft would negatively affect any negotiations to end the war. “No, not at all,” he replied. “No, it’s war.”
Iran has claimed previously to have struck American military planes, but the U.S. has not confirmed any such incidents during the war.
Iranian fire also struck a U.S. aircraft that was mobilized to support the search and rescue mission after the F-15E jet was downed, a U.S. official told NBC News on Friday.
That aircraft, a single-pilot A-10 Thunderbolt, known as a Warthog, made it to Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the aircraft crashed, the official said. The pilot is safe, and the A-10 is down in Kuwait, according to the official.
A U.S. official and Peter Layton, a former officer in the Australian air force and visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, told NBC News the aircraft was most likely based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, where the U.S. Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing is based.
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