(BBC News) US special forces launched a high-stakes raid into Iran on Sunday to rescue an injured airman left stranded in a remote mountainous region after his aircraft was shot down two days earlier.
While many details remain confidential, some information has begun to emerge about how the US raced against the clock and advancing Iranian operatives to find the officer deep inside hostile territory.
The airman’s ordeal began on Friday when an F-15E Strike Eagle jet was shot down over southwestern Iran – the first incident of its kind in more than 20 years.
The two US military personnel on board ejected and, while the pilot was rescued the same day, the second crew member – a weapons operator – became separated and remained stranded in a sparsely populated, rugged region.
Official confirmation soon followed swirling reports that a US airman was missing inside a war zone.
While US aircraft were seen flying low over the area on Saturday, Iran offered a bounty of $66,000 to anyone who found him alive, and videos shared on social media, which have not been verified by the BBC, appeared to show armed civilians searching.
The airman was armed with a handgun, US officials said, and would have received training for this situation, which involves intermittently turning on a beacon signal to help American forces locate him, getting to high ground, establishing communications and concealing himself.
According to reports in US media, the airman hid in a mountain crevice and restricted the use of his beacon signal out of concern it could be picked up by Iran.
A senior Trump administration official said the CIA was able to trace the airman’s exact location and informed the Pentagon, which would have also had to rule out the possibility the beacon signal was an Iranian trap.
Donald Trump later said the injured airman’s location was monitored “24 hours a day” as he was “being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour.”
The CIA reportedly ran a deception campaign inside Iran, spreading word that US forces had already found him.
As US special forces aboard several aircraft made their way toward the stranded officer, strikes were reportedly launched to keep Iranian troops away from the area.
The New York Times reported that the airman communicated information on Iranian positions from his hiding place high on a 7,000-ft ridge to aid with those strikes.
CBS News reported that Navy SEALs – highly trained special operations troops – were then airdropped in to recover the airman.
But their departure was not straightforward.
Two C-130 transport planes tasked with retrieving rescue crews became bogged down in soil and were unable to take off from the remote base in Iran they had used to land, CBS reported.
US officials said they were destroyed to keep them out of enemy hands, standard practice for the military.
Footage and photos assessed by BBC Verify appeared to show a smouldering aircraft wreckage in a mountainous area of central Iran, about 50 km southeast of the city of Isfahan.
Iran’s military said two US C-130 military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters were destroyed during the operation – and that “a deception and escape mission at an abandoned airport in southern Isfahan…was completely foiled,” but US officials have denied they came under attack.
Iranian state media also said on Sunday that troops from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had shot down a US drone over Isfahan while it was searching for the missing airman.
US special forces left Iran on three extra aircraft sent to collect the crews, with one official telling CBS a rudimentary airfield in Iran was utilised for the operation.
The rescued airman landed in Kuwait for medical treatment. Trump said he was “seriously wounded” but “will be just fine”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vpz1kwreo
