By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON, April 3 (Reuters) – A U.S. fighter jet was shot down over Iran and search-and-rescue efforts have so far recovered one of two crew members who ejected, a U.S. official told Reuters, in the first known incident of its kind in the nearly five-week-old war.
The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not respond to requests for comment.
The prospect of a U.S. pilot being alive and on the run inside Iran raises the stakes for the U.S. in a conflict that, according to opinion polls, has struggled to win popular support among Americans.
It also presents a challenge to the U.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 U.S. President 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.”
Two Blackhawk helicopters involved in the search effort were hit by Iranian fire but made it out of Iranian airspace, two U.S. officials told Reuters. In a separate incident, an A10 Warthog fighter aircraft was hit and crashed over Kuwait, with the pilot ejecting, the officials said. The degree of any injuries among the crew of the aircraft remained unclear.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump had been briefed, without confirming any details.
IRANIAN HUNT FOR DOWNED CREW
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.
Two U.S. officials 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, and the U.S. official who confirmed the recovery did not offer any details on how it took place.
U.S. air crews undergo training for what to do if they go down behind enemy lines, called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training, or SERE, but few airmen are fluent in Persian and staying undetected while seeking rescue will be a challenge.
William Goodhind, a forensic imagery analyst with Contested Ground, said images of the plane’s tail fin seen in photos posted on social media are consistent with that of an F-15E Strike Eagle, which carries two crew.
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.
TRUMP’S THREATS AND WAR TOLL
The incident follows threats this week by Trump to bomb the country back to the “Stone Age,” including by attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure and desalination plants, as he presses Tehran to end the war on U.S. terms.
So far, 13 U.S. military service members have been killed in the conflict and more than 300 have been wounded, according to the U.S. Central Command. No U.S. troops have been taken prisoner by Iran.
While Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian military as in tatters, Reuters first reported on U.S. intelligence showing that Iran retains large amounts of missile and drone capability.
As of last week, the U.S. could only determine with certainty that it had destroyed about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal. The status of about another third was less clear, but bombings likely damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, Reuters sources said.
The U.S. and Israeli war on Iran 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 U.S. 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.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington, Catherine Cartier in Beirut and Aaron McNicholas in London; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Andrea Ricci, Edmund Klamann, Mark Porter and Bill Berkrot)
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