The operation to extract him from the ground in hostile territory was hugely complex and involved multiple US government agencies.
12 hours ago
Gabriela Pomeroy
Reuters
The US military has rescued a missing crew member in a dramatic mission after his fighter jet was shot down in a remote part of Iran.
The exact circumstances remain unclear, but the operation to extract him from the ground in hostile territory was hugely complex.
Dozens of special forces, as well as US warplanes and helicopters, were involved in the plan, along with the CIA, US media reported.
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump said on social media: "We have rescued the seriously wounded, and really brave, F-15 Crew Member/Officer, from deep inside the mountains of Iran."
But the airman's ordeal began on Friday with reports that an F-15 jet, which was carrying a weapons systems officer and a pilot, had been shot down over southern Iran.
The incident was the first in which a US fighter jet was shot down by enemy fire in more than 20 years.
The two US military personnel on board the F-15E Strike Eagle managed to eject from the aircraft, and the pilot was rescued the same day, but the second crew member was missing.
The US then began a race against time to locate him.
Iran made it clear they wished to capture him alive and offered a bounty of £50,000 ($66,100).
Videos shared on social media, which have not been verified by the BBC, appeared to show armed civilians searching for him.
Once the officer was on the ground, he had only a handgun to defend himself, US officials said.
The airman would have received training for a situation like this, and it would have involved turning his beacon signal on, getting to high ground, concealing himself and establishing communications.
According to reports in US media, the airman hid himself in a mountain crevice and restricted the use of his beacon - concerned the signal could be picked up by Iran.
He then reportedly waited for his rescuers to arrive.
The CIA played a crucial role in the rescue operation, according to a senior Trump administration official who spoke to US media.
It was the US intelligence agency that tracked the airman's exact location to the mountain crevice and passed the information along to the Pentagon.
Trump said his location was monitored "24 hours a day" by US officials who were planning the rescue operation.
The officer was "being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour," the president added.
The CIA also ran a deception campaign, according to reports, spreading word inside Iran that US forces had already found the second airman.
The president said in his Truth Social post that the US military "sent dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World, to retrieve him".
As US special forces made their way towards the stranded officer, bombs and weapons fire were used to keep Iranian troops away from his location, reports say.
US media also reported that two transport planes that were intended to fly out rescue crews were unable to take off from a remote base inside Iran, and were then destroyed to keep them out of enemy hands. Special forces then flew out on three extra aircraft to collect the crews, the reports added.
Footage and photos confirmed by BBC Verify appeared to show a smouldering aircraft wreckage in a mountainous area of central Iran, about 50km (30 miles) southeast of the city of Isfahan.
Iran's military said two US C-130 military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters were destroyed during the operation - and that "a deception and escape mission at an abandoned airport in southern Isfahan…was completely foiled".
Iranian state media said on Sunday that troops from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had shot down a US drone over Isfahan while it was searching for the missing airman.
The BBC has not been able to confirm either version of events near Isfahan.
Before midnight US time the rescue was complete, and the airman was flown to Kuwait for medical treatment, officials said. Trump said the officer was "seriously wounded", but "he will be just fine".
US authorities have not disclosed any information about the airman's exact location when he was rescued, or his identity.
Former US military official William Fallon - a retired US Navy admiral - told the BBC that "time of day" probably worked in the rescue mission's favour. "Darkness is better for our people because they're used to operating at night."
Fallon says that when flying over hostile territory, "you have to be prepared to be the person that's hit".
Just before 00:00 EDT (04:00 GMT) on Sunday US media broke the news that the second pilot had been found.
Trump wrote on social media that the US would "NEVER LEAVE AN AMERICAN WARFIGHTER BEHIND!"
Iran insisted that the operation had been a failure. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for Iran's main military command, said in a video address that several US military aircraft had been forced to make emergency landings.
"The ignorant president, trapped in the swamp of the war and aggression that he himself started... fully realised that any aggression, ground operation, or infiltration... would face decisive and disgraceful defeat," he said.
This rhetoric of "failed" mission has been repeated by Iran's officials and state TV as well, especially since Donald Trump announced that the pilot had been rescued.
Some US analysts have described the loss of an F-15E deep inside Iranian territory, followed by the destruction of several rescue aircraft, as showing the limitations of the US air power.
Gen Frank McKenzie, a former commander of US Central Command, told the BBC's US partner CBS that "we did in fact lose a couple of aircraft in that mission" but he says you take that loss "any day" in a situation like this.
"It takes a year to build an aircraft - it takes 200 years to build a military tradition where you don't leave anybody behind," he told CBS's Face The Nation programme.
Additional reporting by Ghoncheh Habibiazad, BBC Persian.
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