The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued from an Iranian mountain by US commandos overnight, ending a two-day search after the warplane crashed in south-west Iran. The crew member, a colonel and weapons systems officer, had been wounded but was successfully rescued from a mountain hideout by US special forces, Donald Trump first announced in a social media post soon after midnight.
The US president called it “one of most daring search-and-rescue operations in US history” – and claimed that not a “single American” had been killed or wounded in the operation. Trump said he would hold a press conference in the White House on Monday “with the Military” to provide more detail. In a subsequent social media post, he threatened Iran with the bombing of its power plants and bridges on Tuesday if Tehran did not open the strait of Hormuz to merchant shipping.
Trump also described the F-15 crew member as “seriously wounded, and really brave” on Sunday. The officer was a “highly respected Colonel” who had been picked up in the “type of raid is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment’”. Once located hiding in the mountains, having at one point climbed a 7,000ft (2,135-metre) ridge, the colonel was rescued by a 200-strong special forces team under a hail of heavy covering fire. Three Revolutionary Guards were killed, according to Iranian sources.
Iran’s military said on Sunday that it had destroyed four US aircraft involved in the search operation and that the Americans had used an abandoned airstrip south of Isfahan as a base. State media shared images of charred wreckage scattered across a desert area, with smoke still emanating from the site. Two $115m (£85m) modified Hercules had to be destroyed in Iran because they had run into difficulties, having become bogged down in the ground, according to US media. Three more transport planes had to be flown in to complete the extraction.
Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the US leader. The Israeli prime minister said: “As a nation that repeatedly carried out daring rescue operations, and as someone who was wounded in such a mission and lost a brother in the Entebbe rescue, Israelis and I, we know what a bold decision you took.” The pilot of the aircraft had been rescued on Friday, after the F-15E Strike Eagle became the first US plane to be downed over Iran during the five-week-long war. On Sunday, Trump said the pilot had been rescued “in broad daylight” having spent seven hours on the ground in Iran.
