WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said the American F-15 fighter jet was brought down in Iran by a shoulder-fired missile, leading to the dramatic rescue of two airmen — a glaring reminder of the complexity of the conflict and the perils still posed by Tehran.
Trump and his top officials have said the six-week campaign has devastated the Iranian military, all but eliminating its navy and air force, and damaged countless missile sites and launchers and drone factories. U.S. Central Command said Monday it has hit more than 13,000 targets and damaged or destroyed more than 150 Iranian vessels so far.
But neutralizing conventional military capabilities is exposing a more enduring threat as Trump weighs sending American troops on the ground for another mission inside Iran: so-called asymmetric warfare, in which individuals or small groups of militants can pose strategic threats to the American military.
Trump acknowledged that reality for the first time Monday when he was asked at the White House briefing room about the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has all but shut down.
“We can knock them for a loop, but to close the strait, all you need is one terrorist,” he said.
At a White House news conference, Trump revealed Hollywood-style details of the rescues of both airmen. After the pilot was rescued early on after the crash, the CIA identified the location of the second airman, a weapons systems officer, or “back-seater,” who was hiding in mountainous terrain.
“He scaled cliff faces bleeding rather profusely, treated his own wounds and contacted American forces to transmit his location,” Trump said.
The U.S. flew more than 20 military aircraft into Iran, many at low altitudes, in a daring rescue mission after the airman activated a beacon signaling his location during his nearly 48-hour ordeal, Trump and others said.
But it was a race against time; the Iranian regime sent thousands of its own military forces into the region to locate the airman.
As U.S. special operations forces rushed to find the injured airman, the CIA launched a deception campaign to convince Iranian forces that the Air Force officer had already been rescued, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Monday.
“It was critical that we locate the downed aviator as quickly as possible while at the same time keeping our enemies misdirected,” he said.
The U.S. search-and-rescue operation was “comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert,” Ratcliffe said.
Deception, sometimes involving coordination with local opposition forces, is a standard tactic for the CIA and the U.S. military in rescue operations for troops or aviators marooned in enemy territory.
Airmen are trained to use their beacons sparingly or else risk alerting adversaries about their whereabouts. But the airman was “still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA,” Ratcliffe said.
The information was passed on to the military and the White House.
But the military hit a last-minute snag: Two aircraft got stuck in the sand, and the U.S. had to execute a backup plan to bring in new aircraft to replace them. Those two aircraft and two others were later purposely destroyed by the U.S. before it left the country, Trump and others said Monday.
The recovery of the airman also highlights the dangers of operating on the ground in Iran, even for a limited time. The U.S. military has drawn up possible options for Trump that would involve ground troops, including potential operations to retrieve Iran’s highly enriched uranium, to seize Iranian oil facilities or to free up passage in the Strait of Hormuz by deploying troops to Iranian ports or small islands in the Persian Gulf, NBC News has reported. Any of those operations would entail much more significant and prolonged risks.
The effort to find the injured airman lasted almost two days, but an operation in the Strait of Hormuz or seize the oil terminal at Kharg Island would require many more troops and could mean Marines or other ground forces would hold islands for days or potentially weeks, while the troops on the ground could be exposed to Iranian cruise missiles and drones or attacks from the sea, according to military analysts.
An operation to seize or neutralize nearly 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium would most likely require U.S. forces to hold a perimeter deep inside Iran for several days, according to two former senior officers.
Trump declined to say Monday when he might end the war or what was next for the military campaign, though he threatened Iran and gave the regime until 8 p.m. Tuesday to agree to a deal.
Trump vowed to bomb Iran to the “Stone Ages” if a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not reached.
“After that, they have no bridges, they have no power plans, Stone Ages, yeah,” Trump said.
Targeting civilian infrastructure could be considered a war crime.
Iran has been demanding a permanent end to the war despite Trump’s latest ultimatum. It publicly has rejected proposals for a temporary ceasefire that have been shared through intermediaries.
Apart from the downed F-15, the Iranians shot down an A-10 Warthog aircraft last week and have successfully targeted multiple U.S. military helicopters and more than 15 Reaper drones. Iran’s attacks on U.S. military aircraft suggest the U.S. and Israel have not yet fully eliminated the threat posed by Iran’s missiles, drones and air defenses even though Trump has said Iran had no anti-aircraft equipment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lauded the wider Trump administration for its efforts to rescue the airman, highlighting a coordination call for national security officials that remained active for nearly two full days.
“For 45 hours and 56 minutes, we held that call open for coordination,” Hegseth told reporters, adding that “our mission was unblinking.”
“The meeting never stopped. The planning never ceased,” he said.
