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The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued by US forces, ending a dramatic two day search after the warplane crashed in south west Iran.
The crew member sustained some injuries, said Donald Trump in a social media post soon after midnight EST. The US president called the operation to recover the airman “one of most daring search and rescue operations in U.S history”.
“At my direction, the U.S. Military sent dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World, to retrieve him. He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.
Not a “single American” was killed or wounded in the operation, Trump said in his statement.
The pilot 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.
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 a wreckage, 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.
The US air force launched a massive search and rescue effort, using low-flying Pave Hawk helicopters and specialist C-130 Hercules transport.
Military pilots said the missing F-15 crew member would have been trying to hide for as long as possible from the Iranian military and potentially seeking 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, while Trump, said on Friday the episode would not affect efforts to negotiate a peace settlement with Iran.
A Pave Hawk helicopter was hit by fire from the ground during the rescue of the pilot on Friday, but it was able to fly away successfully. 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.
Iran has been repeatedly bombed by the US and Israel, with several facilities at Mahshahr, a petrochemical complex, in Khuzestan province, targeted on Saturday, but the F-15 and A-10 incidents show that Iran can still inflict damage on the US air force.
A building close to Iran’s civil Bushehr nuclear power plant was struck on Saturday morning, killing a guard, Iran said. Later, the IAEA atomic energy watchdog 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 said it had conducted a wave of strikes on Tehran overnight against what it said were air defence, ballistic missile storage and weapons development facilities. Several heavy blasts were heard in the capital at about 7.30am in the morning in attacks that Iranians described as terrifying.
Iran’s foreign minister also said that Tehran had not – as had been reported in the US overnight – walked away from possible peace talks in Pakistan. Abbas Araghchi, posting on social media, said that Iran’s position had been misrepresented.
“We are deeply grateful to Pakistan for its efforts and have never refused to go to Islamabad. What we care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed on us,” he wrote on X.
Trump said that Iran needed to be ready to reopen the strait of Hormuz to oil tankers and merchant shipping and repeated that he had given Tehran a deadline to comply and threatened an unspecified escalation.
“Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” he said in a social media post.
The US president had originally threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants if it did not accept a peace agreements he proposed, and has periodically repeated that threat while extending the deadline.
Further waves of air transports from military bases in the US to the Middle East have been monitored by aviation enthusiasts since the start of April, raising fresh speculation that Trump may order a ground deployment to seize the Kharg Island oil terminal, islands in the strait of Hormuz or Iran’s nuclear material.
At least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of the war, according to estimates from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, though precise figures are scarce.
Israel attacked Tyre, south Lebanon, after telling residents to leave. One missile destroyed an 11-storey building north-east of the city, a second partly destroyed a five-storey structure and a third hit the Burj al-Shamali Palestinian camp south of the city. Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced more than 1.1 million people. Hezbollah sites in Beirut were also targeted on Friday and overnight, Israel said.
Missiles continued to be fired into Israel. Four people were lightly wounded in three different cities across central Israel and Iran was accused of using cluster munitions, whose use is banned by many countries, in the attacks. One was reported to have landed in a car park near Israel’s Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
