U.S. forces rescued a missing air force colonel from southern Iran on Sunday, concluding a high-stakes, 24-hour search and rescue operation. President Donald Trump confirmed the mission’s success on social media, stating the officer is "now SAFE and SOUND!"
The F-15E Strike Eagle was downed over southern Iran on Friday, forcing both crew members to eject. Iranian officials claimed their air defense systems shot down the aircraft. While the first crew member was recovered shortly after the crash, the colonel spent more than a day hiding in a mountain crevice while armed with only a handgun, according to officials who spoke with CBS News.
President Trump described the mission as one of the most daring in U.S. military history. He noted that the airman was "behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour."
A complex extraction mission
The CIA played a critical role in the operation by tracking the colonel’s location and feeding coordinates to the Pentagon, a senior official told CBS News. To facilitate the extraction, the agency reportedly launched a deception campaign, spreading misinformation that the pilot had already been captured or extracted to confuse Iranian forces.
During the rescue, U.S. military aircraft conducted intense operations in Iranian airspace. President Trump stated that dozens of aircraft participated in the mission, which resulted in no American casualties. However, the operation faced significant resistance. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reported that their forces shot down a U.S. drone searching for the pilot in the Isfahan province.
BBC Verify confirmed footage from Friday showing three armed individuals firing at two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search. Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, noted that the survival of the downed airman was a result of specialized training. "Their number-one priority is to stay alive and to avoid capture," she said. "They're trained to—assuming that they're physically capable, and not so injured that they can't move—try to get away from the ejection site as quickly as possible."
While the exact location of the crash remains unconfirmed, Iranian state media pointed to the Kohgiluyeh, Boyer-Ahmad, or Khuzestan provinces as the site of the engagement. The U.S. military has not released further details on the specific combat maneuvers used during the extraction.
