Iran shot down a US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet over its territory on Friday, triggering a frantic search-and-rescue operation that recovered one of the two crew members alive, while the search for the second airman remained urgently ongoing, marking the first time Iran has downed an American combat aircraft since the war began five weeks ago.
A US fighter jet was shot down over Iran and search-and-rescue efforts recovered one of the two crew members who ejected, a US official told Reuters, in the first known incident of its kind in the nearly five-week-old war.
The two crew members of the F-15E fighter jet ejected safely after being struck by Iranian fire, sources said. US special forces located one of the crew members and rescued him, alive, on Iranian territory. The rescued crew member is alive and receiving medical treatment, two sources confirmed.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is also hunting for the crew and has asked civilians in the area to join the search, offering a reward if they are found. A regional governor in Iran’s southwest issued a public plea for locals to find those on board and promised a reward, while an Iranian state television anchor urged residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to police.
Iran’s IRGC claimed it shot down the aircraft using what it described as “a new advanced air defense system of the IRGC Aerospace Force,” according to Nour News, an outlet linked to the Revolutionary Guard. A CNN analysis of images published by Iranian media is consistent with that of an F-15 aircraft.
The F-15E Strike Eagle, a Boeing-made aircraft, flies with two crew, a pilot and a weapons-systems officer — and is used for both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. The multi-aircraft search-and-rescue mission involved what appeared to be a US Air Force HC-130 aircraft refuelling a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters flying low over central and southwestern Iran.
Israel cancelled planned strikes in Iran so as not to hamper the search-and-rescue efforts, an Israeli official confirmed. Israel is also helping the US with intelligence to locate the missing crew member.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Friday that President Trump had been briefed on the incident. The Pentagon and US Central Command did not respond to requests for comment.
The shootdown carries significant political weight. It comes despite repeated claims from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials that the US had achieved dominance of the Iranian skies. President Trump himself declared just days ago that Iran had “no anti-aircraft equipment,” that their “radar is 100% annihilated,” and that US forces were “unstoppable.”
The incident follows threats this week by Trump to bomb Iran back to the “Stone Age,” including to attack the country’s energy infrastructure and desalination plants, as he pressed Tehran to end the war on US terms. So far, 13 US military service members have been killed in the conflict and more than 300 have been wounded, according to US Central Command. Reuters has previously reported that the US could only determine with certainty it had destroyed about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal.
The shootdown came on a day of wider escalation: a key Iranian bridge collapsed in a US strike, killing at least eight people, while Iran conducted fresh missile and drone attacks on Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
The US-Israel 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 worldwide. The war is unpopular with Americans, with two-thirds believing the US should work to end its involvement quickly, even if that means not achieving the administration’s stated goals, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week.
