Second US airman is injured but SAFE after ‘miraculous’ rescue mission deep inside Iran, says Trump
The second airman missing in Iran after the downing of a US warplane was rescued during a dramatic rescue operation, President Donald Trump said.
Trump late Saturday night described the operation as ‘one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History’ and said the US had rescued a colonel from deep within enemy territory.
In a playful echo of President Obama’s famous words after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, Trump began his statement by announcing the news: ‘WE GOT HIM!’
“This brave warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, hunted by our enemies who were getting closer with every hour,” Trump said in his Truth Social post.
Trump said the colonel was injured in a violent clash with IRGC forces but was “safe and sound.”
The airman was ejected from an F-15E fighter jet along with the plane’s pilot early Friday, sparking a frantic two-day search operation that culminated in a violent firefight.
Trump said that the pilot of the plane was secretly rescued hours after the crash, but that this operation was kept secret so as not to “endanger our second rescue operation.”
The F-15E jet was shot down by Iranian forces on Friday after a US A-10 Warthog was also shot out of the sky in a chaotic day of fighting; this was the first US aircraft shot down since the beginning of the conflict.
A second US airman shot down over Iran was rescued in a daring rescue operation after a fierce firefight with the Revolutionary Guard, according to reports. The wreckage of the pilot’s F-15E fighter plane was viewed
Picture: Seat ejected from a US plane, published in Iranian media
Trump announced the success of the rescue mission on Saturday evening. Trump began his statement by announcing the news, a playful echo of President Obama’s famous words after US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011: ‘WE GOT HIM’
This comes after Trump previously said on Truth Social that US forces had ‘killed’ many of Iran’s military leaders and shared footage showing an airstrike that eliminated senior Revolutionary Guard commanders.
Trump’s social media posts praising the rescue operations came just hours after the White House angrily shut down rumors that the president had been hospitalized on Saturday.
The government said Trump had not appeared publicly in three days because he was focused on the conflict with Iran.
After two US planes were shot down on Friday, Iran vowed to take revenge on US military forces for the conflict and placed a $60,000 bounty on the heads of US airmen.
Before the rescue mission took place, the official X account of the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, posted harrowing new images of the destroyed F-15E jet with a sarcastic caption.
‘The secret warrior who now has no escape other than lying under the feet of aviation warriors,’ the embassy wrote.
“The same phantom giant about which they created legends for years is today a fallen pile of scrap metal, the very technology they claim is invisible and untouchable,” he added. ‘But now it has been seen and destroyed.’
While the pilot was quickly rescued, the second member of the crew, the Weapons Systems Officer, used special survival techniques to avoid capture long enough to be rescued, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin said in an X post Saturday night.
The soldier used SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) training to avoid capture, climb a high hill away from the debris, and extinguish the distress signal in hopes of locating him.
Griffin said many Iranian soldiers were killed and wounded in the operation, but no US soldiers were killed.
Trump had previously stated on Truth Social that US forces had ‘killed’ many of Iran’s military leaders and shared footage showing an airstrike that eliminated senior Revolutionary Guard commanders.
The Iranian army had previously shared images showing the F-15E fighter jet being launched from the sky.
A US official told Fox News that the mission was “very complex” and that various branches of the US military were involved in finding and rescuing the airman.
During search and rescue operations on Friday, two rescue helicopters were shot down by Iranian forces and the helicopter crew was injured.
As Iranian forces approached the stranded airman, images circulating on social media showed Bakhtiari tribes in Iran’s Khuzestan advancing towards the mountains with rifles in their hands to search for the American soldier.
While the Iranians were offered a reward of $60,000 for the pilot’s ‘head’, Trump refrained from commenting on how he would react if the pilot was harmed.
Broadcasters urged locals near the crash site to capture the American, telling viewers: ‘If you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police, you will receive a valuable reward.’
News channels also broadcast ‘If you see one, shoot’ messages on the screen and showed footage of villagers combing a rocky hillside.
In a laudatory statement posted online, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf mocked the United States and Trump for their repeated claims to win the war.
Ghalibaf wrote: “After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this strategyless brilliant war they started is no longer “regime change” but “Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please downgraded to “”
