Behind the Scenes of 'Historic' US Operation Behind Enemy Lines: How the CIA Tricked Tehran into Recovering the Last US Pilot in Iran
The US scored a military success on Sunday after the second member of the US Air Force who ejected from the downed F-15E jet over Iran was retrieved “safe and unharmed” from a mountainous area, at the end of a mission that Donald Trump said was “one of the most daring search and rescue operations in the history of the United States”. The success of the special forces in recovering the American officer, a colonel, would not have been possible without the help of the CIA, which orchestrated a disinformation campaign in Iran.
The second US pilot wanted since Friday, after the downing of the F-15E jet over Iran, was rescued in a military operation and is “safe and unharmed”, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday.
The plane, a multi-role F-15E, crashed in southwest Iran and the two crew members ejected during the flight, according to AFP.
The Iranians have promised a reward for the capture of the second serviceman, the first of which was evacuated shortly after the crash in a US special forces operation.
“In the last few hours, the US military has completed one of the most daring search and rescue operations in the history of the United States to come to the aid of one of our incredible crew officers, who also happens to be a highly respected colonel, and who I am pleased to report is now SAFE AND UNINHARED!”, the US president wrote on his Truth Social network.
He stated that the soldier was injured, but “he will be fine” and that the rescue operation mobilized “dozens of devices”.
Iran's Tasnim news agency reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guards had announced that a US aircraft participating in the search operations had been “destroyed”, without giving further details. Washington has not yet reacted to this information.
Since the start of the war, no US soldiers have been killed or captured on Iranian soil, but 13 have died in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
How the rescue mission began after the plane crash
According to sources cited by Axios, the two crew members managed to contact command via communications systems after they ejected on Friday.
The first serviceman was rescued a few hours after the plane was shot down. During that rescue operation, Iran rammed a US Blackhawk helicopter, injuring crew members, but it was able to continue its flight.
It took more than a day to locate and rescue the weapons systems officer.
A senior administration official told Axios that before locating the officer behind enemy lines, the CIA launched a disinformation campaign, spreading the rumor in Iran that US forces had already found him and were trying to evacuate him by land.
Meanwhile, the CIA used “unique capabilities” to search for him. “It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but in this case it was a brave American soul hidden in a mountain crevasse, invisible to all but the CIA,” the official told the US publication.
According to the official, the CIA communicated his exact location to the Pentagon, the US military and the White House, and Trump immediately ordered a rescue mission.
Trump said that both crew members were rescued without any American loss of life demonstrates that the US does indeed have “overwhelming air dominance and superiority”.
US military praised for operation
The US operation to rescue the servicemen who were in Iranian territory would have begun as soon as the Air Force confirmed the loss of a plane, which would have required a large-scale joint operation between several branches of the military and its partners, Mick Ryan, senior research fellow in military studies at the Lowy Institute and a reserve major general of the Australian Army, told CNN.
“The US Air Force, US Army Special Forces and a number of other organizations would have come together, developed contingency plans and come up with a number of different options to save both crew members,” Ryan added.
“Nobody in the world could have done it the way the US military did,” claimed the Australian reserve general.
The operation faced the inherent risks of flying over Iranian territory, so U.S. forces would have examined Iran's air defense environment when planning the rescue, Ryan said. But they had an advantage: after more than a month of war, Iran's defense capacity was severely depleted.
“There have been over 10,000 missions so far with the loss of just one fighter jet. So I think overall the US Air Force has been pretty successful in (suppressing Iranian air defenses),” he added.
The downing of US Air Force F-15s and A-10s in separate incidents brings to seven the known number of manned aircraft destroyed in the war with Iran, according to CNN.
Technology, the asset in the rescue operation
The rescue mission was not easy, and a number of things could have gone wrong during the operation behind enemy lines, US Air Force Reserve Col. Cedric Leighton told CNN, highlighting its complexities.
Retired Colonel Cedric Leighton said the isolated area is full of dust and impurities that can seriously damage an aircraft's engines and landing gear. The terrain is “pretty rough,” he added.
“There's also the possibility that things don't go as planned. Someone might take a wrong turn in a village and suddenly find themselves face-to-face with a policeman. Those are the kinds of things, big or small, that can go wrong. And when they go wrong, they can spell disaster for a mission,” he said.
The reservist colonel said such a rescue mission often requires a highly coordinated routine, where “every detail has to work before everything can come together.”
Technology capable of locating the missing pilot also contributed to the success of a mission that would have been difficult to accomplish decades ago, he pointed out.
