“WE GOT HIM!” exclaimed President Donald Trump on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday morning. Less than 48 hours after a US fighter jet was shot down by enemy fire over southern Iran, its two crew members were safely back in American hands, after what Trump called “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History”.
The US emerged victorious in a race against the Iranian regime, which launched a massive manhunt for the aircraft’s weapons systems officer after the F-15 crash, setting a £50,000 bounty on his head and encouraging locals to search the area.
Hundreds of Special Operations troops, warplanes and helicopters worked with the CIA and the Pentagon to locate the downed US service member, who was eventually rescued on Saturday night from a mountain crevice where he was hiding after hiking up a 7,000ft ridge.
How did the mission unfold?
The CIA was involved from an early stage, launching a “deception campaign” to throw the Iranians off the scent by reporting that the officer, who Trump described as a “highly decorated colonel”, had been found and was being taken out of Iran in a ground convoy. Helicopters were deployed to the region, flying low over the land to try and spot the airman.
The agency managed to located the colonel to a “mountain crevice” where he was hiding, after hiking up a 7,000ft ridgeline to evade his pursuers, a senior US military official said, according to the New York Times. Once there, with only a handgun to defend himself, he was able to communicate with US forces using a secure communication device.
The Pentagon took over the rescue effort once his location was confirmed, sending in fighter jets and drones to deter Iranian forces from approaching while they extracted the injured officer. The final effort was by a US Navy SEAL team, completing the trifecta of armed forces involved.
But the rescue mission faced a last-minute hitch that could have been a disaster for the operation, according to US media. The aircraft initially sent to extract the officer were unable to take off after malfunctioning in a temporary airfield.
The Americans then took the decision to blow up their own planes to prevent them falling into enemy hands, before three more aircraft were sent to complete the extraction, it is claimed.
The aircraft destroyed are understood to have included two HC-130J Combat King II rescue aircraft and two helicopters.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) has claimed it shot down the aircraft during the mission. Iran also claimed it hit two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search and rescue mission, though they were not shot down.
There were no casualties on the US side, according to Trump.
‘Things could have gone very wrong’
The operation was “extremely risky”, according to Fawaz Gerges, an LSE professor and expert on conflict in the Middle East.
“Even though President Trump would like us to believe that everything went perfectly, things could have gone very wrong,” Gerges said.
He said Trump’s portrayal of the mission in his post proved his claim of America’s “overwhelming Air Dominance” was an “exaggeration”.
“This area was one of the most mountainous regions in Iran, this was not in the heartland,” Gerges said. “There were no critical Iranian forces in the area, in fact the Iranian authorities relied on volunteers and tribal people to basically search for the crew member and the plane.”
Professor Scott Lucas, an expert in US foreign policy in the Middle East, said that: “At the very least the Americans have paid a pretty significant cost for this operation.
“The Iranians will also be celebrating that they gave the Americans a punch in the nose.”
He noted that because this was a “very specialised operation in a very remote mountainous area”, the US “created a temporary airstrip” to help land the special forces to retrieve the pilot.
“They either got trapped on that airstrip or they got attacked on that airstrip or both, which is why they had to blow up the two C130s,” he added. “What the Americans have not acknowledged is whether they lost helicopters as well.
“For people who have long memories this may evoke the 1980 attempt to rescue the American hostages, where the American personnel were killed when two helicopters crashed into each other.”
The Iranian regime has compared the mission to Operation Eagle Claw, when eight American servicemen were killed in a failed attempt to rescue the Americans held in the April 1980 Iran hostage crisis.
Why was the search and rescue mission so significant?
Two US warplanes were hit by Iranian fire on Friday, just days after Trump had been boasting that Iran had no air defences.
While the other aircraft, two helicopters and an A-10 attack plane, were able to escape Iranian air space before any serious damage was done, an F-15 fighter jet was shot down over a mountainous region of Iran. Images of the crash circulating online appear to confirm it happened near Shareza in the Isfahan province, as reported by Iranian state media, but the exact location is unknown.
Both crew members safely ejected, and the pilot was picked up soon after, but the weapons officer could not initially be located by either side.
It would have been a huge boon for the Iranian side to capture the downed airman, who would then likely have been paraded on state television and used as a propaganda tool to bolster domestic morale and show the world that Iran was not capable of fighting back against the US.
The US then threw the full might of the military and intelligence services behind locating the missing officer.
Lucas said there will be a “great deal of relief” that the colonel did not fall into enemy hands.
A still image purporting to show US aircraft destroyed during the mission to find a stranded colonel in Iran (Photo: Social media via Reuters)‘No respite’
Gerges warned that if the US starts attacking critical infrastructure such as uranium enriching plants or tries to occupy Kharg Island, where Iran exports most of its oil, Iranian forces will be much better equipped to defend their territory.
“It could be a bloodbath,” he said.
On Saturday, Trump gave Iran a 48-hour deadline to ” make a deal or reopen the Strait of Hormuz”, the global shipping channel which Iranian strikes are currently making too dangerous for Western ships to navigate, forcing up energy prices worldwide, threatening “all Hell” would be let loose on Iran if not.
Lucas said this represents a “decisive point” in the conflict: if Trump decides to escalate, attacking more civilian infrastructure, Iran will respond in kind by stepping up attacks on the Gulf, as they did on Sunday morning.
“There will be an attempt from Trump to at least get some breathing space from the difficulties by celebrating this,” he said. “There’s no respite here, we’re still in that zone of uncertainty, of uncontained war.”
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