American officials feared the Iranians might be luring them into a trap when they received their first message from an airman who was hiding, in the country’s southwest, after his F-15 fighter jet was shot down late last week.
The jet’s pilot was recovered shortly after the incident. But its weapons systems officer was left alone, behind enemy lines, as both the Americans and Iranians searched for him.
Speaking to Axios today, a handful of hours after the US military pulled off a miraculous rescue of the officer, President Donald Trump said America had only “beeping information” about his location before he managed to send a short radio message.
“He said, ‘Power be to God,’” Mr Trump recounted.
A US defence official clarified, to Axios, that the exact phrase was actually “God is good”.
This initially made US officials suspicious, Mr Trump said, that the airman was in Iranian custody and the enemy was trying to lay a trap for American forces using “false signals”.
“What he said on the radio sounded like something a Muslim would say,” the President said.
He was likely alluding to the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”, frequently used in Islam, which translates to “God is great”.
Mr Trump said people familiar with the missing officer explained that he was a religious person, and so the radio message was in line with what they’d expect him to say.
“It was not completely clear early on, but we stuck with it and verified he was alive and not captured. And those who knew him said he is religious,” the unnamed official confirmed.
When that was established, the rescue operation proceeded.
‘Thousands of savages hunting him down’
The particulars of that operation appear to be quite remarkable.
After the F-15 was shot down, US surveillance planes and drones combed the area around the crash site, but could not find the weapons officer or any signs that he had survived. His status was designated as “unknown”.
That’s according to an extensive report from The New York Times, which cited a dozen current and former military and Trump administration officials.
Meanwhile, the airman climbed a 2000-metre high ridge line, an incredible feat in itself, given he had just ejected from an aircraft. That is, as BBC military analyst Mikey Kay put it today, a “brutal process” that “can produce massive forces on the body”.
The officer was reportedly injured, though we have yet to learn the details of those injuries. Reuters reports he had sprained his ankle.
Having scaled the ridge, the officer wedged himself into a crevice, hoping it would conceal him from the Iranians.
Like all airmen on flight missions, he was carrying a beacon and a secure communications device. But those devices are not meant to be used constantly, lest they give away the owner’s position to the enemy.
So about 14 hours after the crash, as officials back in the US were preparing to release a statement announcing the successful rescue of the fighter jet’s pilot, they finally found the beacon’s signal.
The planned statement was ditched, the theory being that no public comment should be made until the weapons officer was also safe.
Intelligence indicated one of Iran’s search parties had “assembled at the base of the mountain where he was hiding”, according to The Times’ report.
He “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”, Mr Trump said on social media. He used even blunter language during his phone call with Axios.
“Thousands of these savages were hunting him down,” said the President.
“Even the population was looking for him. They offered people a bonus if they captured him.”
During this period one of America’s intelligence agencies, the CIA, continued to track the officer and confirm his location with the Pentagon.
It had another task as well: confusing his Iranian pursuers.
“The CIA launched a deception campaign, spreading word inside Iran that US forces had already found him and were moving him on the ground for exfiltration,” reported Jennifer Griffin, a veteran national security correspondent with Fox News.
The plan was intended to shift some of Iran’s attention from the ridge where the airman was still hiding to the roads, where the fictional ground convoy would supposedly be moving.
It did, apparently, work to at least some extent, causing confusion among the searchers.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth sought Mr Trump’s approval, a final order, to launch the rescue operation itself. It was immediately given.
“We have to get him,” Mr Trump said, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking to The Wall Street Journal.
The Americans waited until darkness fell to actually launch their rescue operation, which involved dozens of aircraft, according to Mr Trump, and about a hundred special operations soldiers, led by some members of the vaunted SEAL Team 6.
The main force was backed up by helicopters, surveillance planes, jets and fuel tankers, all of which were prepared to provide support if necessary.
“As the commandos landed on the objective, US and Israeli warplanes dropped bombs whose bright orange blasts lit up the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains. From his hiding place, the weapons officer alerted his rescuers to the areas they should target for strikes, where he could see Iranians advancing,” The Times reported.
“The commandos fired their weapons ferociously to keep any Iranians in the area from advancing toward them. But they did not engage in a firefight with enemy forces.
“US officials described the territory where the airman was hiding as strongly opposed to the Iranian regime and said it was unclear how close Iranian forces ever got to the site.”
After retrieving the airman, US forces put him on a helicopter, which then took him to a makeshift air strip further inside Iran. Special Operations had previously created the strip in preparation for exactly this scenario.
It was at this point that the high-stakes operation hit a snag. Two C-130 transport planes, which were supposed to take all the US soldiers to safety, got stuck in the air strip’s dirt, and attempts to dislodge them failed.
“If there was a ‘holy s***’ moment, that was it,” one US official told Reuters.
Eventually, three much smaller replacement aircraft, capable of landing on the strip without getting stuck, were dispatched to finish the rescue, and took the airman to an airfield in nearby Kuwait.
The US bombed and destroyed the stuck aircraft, along with four helicopters, to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands.
Video footage and images of the wreckage were later published by a state media agency, Sepah News, which is run by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The agency claimed, falsely, that Iranian forces had shot down the aircraft.
There were, miraculously, no American casualties.
“Over the past several hours, the United States military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,” Mr Trump subsequently declared.
Uncharacteristically, he was not even slightly exaggerating.
