One crew member from the two-person F-15E jet was rescued by U.S. forces and the search continues for the other crew member, according to Axios and CBS news, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
The crash comes at a moment of political pressure for President Donald Trump, who is facing high gas prices, a stock market downturn, and declining approval ratings tied to his war with Iran. In a prime-time address Wednesday night, Trump said he planned to continue attacking Iran for two or three more weeks to further debilitate its ballistic missile program and set back its ability to develop a nuclear weapon.
In a statement published on the semi-official Tasnim News Agency on Friday morning, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) claimed that it had shot down an American “fighter jet in the central sky of Iran by the new advanced aerospace defense system of the Guards.” The statement mistakenly claimed that the downed fighter jet was an F-35, but did not specify when or where it had been shot down or crashed.
Images of the wreckage shared by Iranian state media and analyzed by aviation experts indicate the aircraft was a U.S. Air Force F-15E.
Shortly afterward, reports from semi-official Iranian news agencies showed widespread air activity by U.S. planes and helicopters in two of Iran’s southwestern provinces, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad. Video showed what appeared to be HC-130 aircraft and HH-60 Black Hawk helicopters performing search and rescue operations in the two provinces, at times flying extremely low.
The low-altitude flights prompted concerns among locals that an airborne military operation by U.S. troops might be taking place. Videos circulated online by semi-official news agencies showed locals shooting at the aircraft with rifles and hunting guns.
Iran shifts from shoot-on-sight to capture orders for U.S. crew
Later, the official instructions shifted once again, telling locals there would be a reward for the capture of any American military members they may find, likely to try to use a U.S. service member as a bargaining chip in negotiations over ending the war. Official messages offered “a valuable reward to anybody who arrests and hands over the enemy pilot or pilots alive.”
The counties that Iranian officials wanted searched are in the sparsely populated Zagros Mountain range, where the average elevation is over 2,000 metres above sea level.
Three F-15s were mistakenly shot down by the U.S. ally Kuwait in early March. Since the start of Epic Fury, the name the Trump administration gave to the operations against Iran, 13 American service members have been killed. Six died in the crash of an air refueling plane in Iraq. Seven died from incoming Iranian attacks.
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