A US fighter jet has been shot down over Iran, and search-and-rescue efforts have so far recovered one of two crew members who ejected, Reuters reported, citing a US official.
It is the first known incident of its kind in the nearly five-week-old US-Iran war. The incident also brings a new kind of pressure on US President Donald Trump as the prospect of a US pilot being alive and on the run inside Iran raises the stakes for Washington in a conflict that, according to opinion polls, has struggled to win popular support among Americans.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump had been briefed, without confirming any details of the incident. The Pentagon and US Central Command (CENTCOM) have not commented on the matter.
Two US officials quoted by Reuters said the aircraft was an F-15E fighter jet, which has two seats: one for a pilot and the second for a weapons systems officer. It was unclear which of the two was recovered. The report also did not provide any details on how the rescue occurred.
Iran shooting down a US jet over its territory also presents a challenge to Washington’s military, which faces the twin goals of trying to save the life of an American behind enemy lines while safeguarding anyone involved in perilous rescue missions.
The incident comes over a week after Donald Trump said in the Oval Office that Iran’s military had been defeated to the point that “we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country. They can’t do a thing about it.”
Iran is also hunting for the missing US airman
Iranian officials called on civilians to be on the lookout for survivors and have flooded social media with images that purport to show wreckage from the aircraft.
US air crews undergo training for what to do if they go down behind enemy lines, called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), but few airmen are fluent in Persian, and staying undetected while seeking rescue will be a challenge.
The governor of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province said anyone who captured or killed the crew “would be specially commended,” Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA reported.
The incident follows threats this week by Trump to bomb the country back to the “Stone Age,” including to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure and desalination plants, as he presses Tehran to end the war on US terms.
So far, 13 US military service members have been killed in the conflict, and more than 300 have been wounded, according to the US Central Command. So far, no US troops have been taken prisoner by Iran.
While Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian military as in tatters, Reuters first reported on US intelligence showing that Iran retains large amounts of missile and drone capability.
The US and Israeli war with Iran, which began on February 28, has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands of people and hitting the global economy with soaring energy prices that are fuelling fears of inflation in countries around the world.
The war is unpopular with Americans, with two-thirds believing the US should work to end its involvement in the conflict quickly, even if that means not achieving the goals set out by the Trump administration, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed this week.
