US President Donald Trump on Monday said that approximately 200 men were deployed to pick up the US Air Force officer who was stranded in Iran after his fighter jet was struck down on Friday during a Operation Epic Fury mission.
The US President said the “complex and dangerous” mission involved 155 aircraft, including 4 bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, and 13 rescue aircraft, among other assets. He added that the aerial assets sent for the extraction were flying in extremely low altitudes and “US military personnel faced gunfire at very close range.”
While the pilot of the F-15E Strike Eagle jet was immediately rescued, the extraction of the Colonel-ranked weapons systems officer was announced on Sunday. The extraction took place alongside the rescue of a jet pilot on Saturday. Trump said the two military personnel were rescued separately, from deep within Iranian territory.
Trump detailed that the airman was wounded, and reaffirmed that the US military leaves no one behind. “I ordered the American armed forces to do whatever was necessary to bring our brave warriors back home,” Trump told reporters.
Joining Trump at the event, CIA director John Ratcliffe said his agency found and confirmed the service member was alive on Saturday morning (local time).
The agency passed on the intel to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who told , setting the operation in motion, Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe said the agency engaged in a “deception campaign” to convince the Iranians the airman was somewhere else. The officer was “concealed in a mountain crevice, still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA,” Ratcliffe said.
Hegseth, who was also at the event, said the airman used an emergency transponder to share his location, and his first message was: “God is good.”
Trump threatened to jail the reporter who first reported that US military were searching for the officer shot down in Iran, if they don’t reveal their sources.
“The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say,” Trump said. He said the leak tipped off the Iranians, endangering the officer and his rescuers. Without naming the individual or news outlet, he called the leaker “a sick person.”
.: “We have to find that leaker because that’s a sick person… They put this mission at great risk.”
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)
Earlier on Monday, on the sidelines of the White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump said Iran was able to down a US aircraft with a “lucky shot” during the operation. He also said “we have some helicopters with a lot of bullet holes in them right now probably.”
On Sunday, Donald Trump announced that the American military successfully conducted the rescue operation.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “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.”
According to an initial NYT, during the rescue of the weapons officer, two US transport planes, meant to carry the personnel to safety, got stuck at a remote base, prompting the personnel to blow the aircraft up.
However, later in the day, the Unified Command of the Iranian Armed Forces said that two C-130 planes and two Blackhawk helicopters were downed south of Isfahan during the rescue operation.
