US rescues second crew member of downed F-15E fighter jet from Iran

Original article by Dan Sabbagh in Jerusalem

The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued 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 sustained some injuries but was successfully extracted by US special forces, Donald Trump said in a social media post soon after midnight EST.

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”. 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. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” he wrote.

Trump also added further details on the rescue, describing the F-15 crew member as “seriously wounded, and really brave”. 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’”.

Initial reports indicated that once located hiding in the mountains, having at one point climbed a 7,000ft (2,135-metre) ridge, the colonel was rescued by a 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 three US aircraft involved in the search operation and that the Americans had used an abandoned airport in southern Isfahan as a base. State media shared images of charred wreckage scattered across a desert area, with smoke still emanating from the site.

At least one $115m (£85m) Hercules had to be destroyed in Iran because it had run into difficulties, having become bogged down in the ground, according to US media. Extra transport planes had to be flown in to complete the extraction.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, highlighted the cost of the lost aircraft with an apparent photograph of the wreckage: “If the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.”

Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump. 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.”

Footage emerged of what was said to be night-time clashes in Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, near the city of Dehdasht, about 30 miles from the coast in the south-west of the country, the area where US searches had been taking place.

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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.

The US air force had launched a massive search-and-rescue effort, using low-flying Pave Hawk helicopters and specialist C-130 Hercules transport planes.

The CIA took more than a day to locate the missing airman, according to a report in Axios, and launched a disinformation campaign in Iran to give the impression that he had been found in order to fool Iranian forces on the ground.

Uncrewed Reaper drones were used to protect the crew member once he had been located, by “striking Iranian military-aged males believed to be a threat who got within three kilometers”, according to a correspondent with the US Air & Space Forces Magazine, who said he had been briefed on the operation.

Military pilots said the missing F-15 crew member would have been trying to hide for as long as possible from the Iranian military. If possible, the colonel would have tried to transmit their location relative to a known secret point in the hope that US special forces coming in via helicopter would be able to rescue them.

It was not clear exactly how the F-15 was downed, although Iran said it had shot it down. The US military did not publicly comment. Trump said on Friday that the episode would not affect efforts to negotiate a peace settlement with Iran.

The US military had not had a jet shot down by enemy fire in more than 20 years – since a warplane was downed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq – retired air force Brig Gen Houston Cantwell told the Associated Press.

Iranian media released pictures of the wreckage of a plane, including a distinctive F-15 tail fin, and a used ejector seat on Friday, with state media and businesses in the country offering a bounty if the missing crew member could be captured.

It also emerged that a Pave Hawk helicopter was hit by fire from the ground during the rescue of the pilot on Friday, but was able to fly away. Another combat plane, an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, crashed near the strait of Hormuz with Iran claiming it had shot it down. Its pilot was rescued.

The loss of the F-15 and other aircraft had come as a relative surprise, given the air superiority the US and Israel have established over Iran from the beginning of the five-week-long war. But it demonstrated that after thousands of bombing missions, Iran still has the capacity to inflict high-profile damage on the US.

Trump said the US would never leave an American warfighter behind, committing the country’s military to similar rescue efforts if any more planes are brought down.

Meanwhile, heavy bombing of Iran continued. Israel attacked several facilities at Mahshahr, a petrochemical complex in Khuzestan province, on Saturday, and on Sunday Iranian officials said that production there had been shut down.

A building close to Iran’s civil Bushehr nuclear power plant was struck on Saturday morning, killing a guard, Iran said. Later, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been informed by Iran of the incident, the fourth in recent weeks, and added “no increase in radiation levels was reported”.

Israel also attacked Lebanon, having issued a warning that people should evacuate at least 300 metres away from a building in southern Beirut that it said was affiliated with Hezbollah. Seven people were recorded as killed in a strike on Kfar Hatta, 30 miles north of the border with Israel.

A fire broke out at the Borouge petrochemical plant in the United Arab Emirates after falling debris from a missile interception caused a blaze, prompting operations at the facility to be suspended. A fire was extinguished at a storage tank belonging to Bahrain’s state energy company, the company said on Sunday.