U.S. forces safely rescued the second F-15E crew member of a two-seat fighter jet that went down over Iran on Friday, two U.S. officials said late Saturday.
President Donald Trump said the rescue was "an Easter miracle" in a text message to NBC News, and praised U.S. forces for their "strong, decisive" actions.
“The Iranians thought they had him, but it wasn’t even close,” he said. “And remember, we got two, but couldn’t talk about the first in that it would have highlighted that there was a second.”
The U.S. officials said late Saturday that the second airman was pulled from Iran safely, with rescue crews also out of harm's way.
“He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” President Donald Trump said in a separate post on his social media platform Truth Social, adding that the airman is a “highly respected Colonel.”
The plane’s pilot had been located shortly after the crash.
A senior Trump administration official told NBC News that second crew member's rescue was made possible with the help of CIA subterfuge.
The intelligence agency first launched a deception campaign inside Iran, saying U.S. forces had already found the airman alive and were moving him on the ground to remove him from the country, the official said.
“While the Iranians were confused and uncertain of what was happening, the Agency used its unique, exquisite capabilities to search for -- and find -- the American," the official said in a statement. "This was the ultimate 'needle in a haystack,’ but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but for CIA’s capabilities.”
The CIA immediately alerted the defense department and the White House of the crew member's location, with the president ordering an immediate rescue mission "which the DoW executed with boldness and precision, with CIA continuing to provide real time information," the official said, using an acronym for Department of War, the administration's unofficial renaming of the Department of Defense.
The F-15E strike happened as the president and his administration have received heavy criticism over the war. On Saturday, Trump characterized the rescue as a major triumph in the effort.
"The United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History," he said.
The president credited his military leaders for their diligence, and said he ordered “dozens” of aircraft with lethal weapons to join the search.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” the president said.
Iran's armed forces and Revolutionary Guard both said that multiple U.S. aircraft had been destroyed during the rescue operation, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency and state media outlet IRNA reported. A spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said Sunday that two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and one C-130 transport aircraft had been destroyed.
Fars cited a military spokesperson claiming that the attempt to rescue the downed fighter pilot failed, accusing Trump of trying to create confusion.
U.S. rescue crews and other special operations forces had been searching for the second airman, known as the backseater or weapons systems officer, since Friday.
Iran shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle on Friday, with the first crew member rescued the same day. The American military was scrambling to find the second aviator after official and semi-official Iranian news organizations reported that a regional governor had offered a bounty for its crew. A representative of merchants and businesses was reportedly offering the equivalent of $60,000 for the Americans.
This appears to be the first time that a U.S. aircraft has gone down inside Iran as part of this latest conflict, dispelling the notion that the U.S. has complete control over the Iranian airspace.
Iran’s media published photos alongside claims from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it had shot down the F-15E. Nour News, an outlet linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said the jet “was destroyed in the skies over central Iran by a new advanced air defense system of the IRGC Aerospace Force.”
In recent days, the U.S. has ramped up the number of bombing runs over the country.
In a brief phone interview on Friday, Trump was asked if Iran’s takedown of the aircraft would negatively affect any negotiations to end the war. “No, not at all," the president replied. "No, it’s war.”
Iran has claimed previously to have struck American military planes, but the U.S. has not confirmed any such incidents during the war.
A U.S. aircraft that was mobilized to support the search and rescue mission was also struck by Iranian fire after the F-15E jet was downed, a U.S. official told NBC News Friday.
That aircraft, a single-pilot A-10 Thunderbolt, known as a Warthog, made it to Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the aircraft crashed, the official said. The pilot is safe and the A-10 is down in Kuwait, according to the official.
A U.S. official and Peter Layton, a former officer in the Australian air force and visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, told NBC News the aircraft was likely based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, where the U.S. Air Force 48th Fighter Wing is based.
