A US service member who has been missing since Iran shot down a fighter jet has been rescued, President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post early Sunday.
The crew member has been missing since Friday, when Iran downed a US F-15E Strike Eagle. A second crew member was rescued earlier.
Trump wrote that the aviator is injured but “will be just fine,” adding that he took refuge “on the treacherous mountains of Iran.”
Trump added that the rescue involved “dozens of aircraft” and that the US had been monitoring his location “24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”
The war began with joint US-Israel strikes on Feb. 28 and has killed thousands, shaken global markets, cut off key shipping routes and spiked fuel prices. Both sides have threatened, and hit, civilian targets, bringing warnings of possible war crimes.
The fighter jet was the first US aircraft to have crashed in Iranian territory since the conflict in late February.
Trump said last week that the US had “decimated” Iran and would finish the war “very fast.” Two days later, Iran shot down two US military planes, showing the ongoing perils of the bombing campaign and the ability of a degraded Iranian military to continue to hit back.
The other jet to go down was a US A-10 attack aircraft. Neither the status of the crew nor exactly where it crashed was immediately known.
A frantic US search-and-rescue operation unfolded after the crash of the F-15E jet on Friday, focusing on a mountainous region in Iran’s southwestern province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad.
Iran also promised a reward for anyone who turned in the “enemy pilot.” Iran’s joint military command on Saturday said that it also struck two US Black Hawk helicopters Friday, but The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify that.
Trump renews threat
Trump renewed his threats for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy shipments that has been choked off by Tehran, by Monday or face devastating consequences, writing Saturday in a social media post: “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.”
“The doors of hell will be opened to you” if Iran’s infrastructure is attacked, Gen. Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi with the country’s joint military command said late Saturday in response to Trump’s renewed threat, state media reported. In turn, the general threatened all infrastructure used by the US military in the region.
But Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi, told The Associated Press that his government’s efforts to broker a ceasefire are “right on track” after Islamabad last week said that it would soon host talks between the US and Iran.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that Iranian officials “have never refused to go to Islamabad.”
Mediators from Pakistan, Türkiye and Egypt were working to bring the US and Iran to the negotiating table, according to two regional officials.
A second US Air Force combat aircraft went down in the Middle East on Friday, according to a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military situation. It wasn’t clear if the aircraft crashed or was shot down, or whether Iran was involved.
Iranian state media said a US A-10 attack aircraft crashed in the Gulf after being struck by Iran’s defense forces.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, issued a veiled threat late Friday to disrupt traffic through a second strategic waterway in the region, the Bab el-Mandeb.
The strait, 32 kilometers (20 miles) wide, links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. More than a tenth of seaborne global oil and a quarter of container ships pass through it.
“Which countries and companies account for the highest transit volumes through the strait?” Qalibaf wrote.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began.
In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 US service members have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Ten Israeli soldiers have died there.
