President Donald Trump has spent weeks insisting that Iran’s military had been “annihilated” and its skies were effectively defenseless. Then Iran shot down not one, but two U.S. aircraft.
A U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle was brought down over southern Iran, triggering a frantic search-and-rescue mission for its crew.
One airman has been rescued so far, but the fate of the second remains unclear as Iranian forces flood the crash zone and state media urges civilians to help capture any survivors.
A second U.S. combat aircraft was hit hours later, though its pilot managed to escape Iranian territory before ejecting and was rescued, a U.S. official told CNN.
Two U.S. search-and-rescue helicopters were also hit by Iranian fire, injuring personnel on board, though both aircraft made it safely back to base, according to The Washington Post.
The incidents have delivered a blunt reality check to a White House that has repeatedly claimed total dominance over Iranian airspace.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran has no meaningful ability to fight back.
“We could hit it and it would be gone, and there’s not a thing they could do about it. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated,” he said in a televised address from the White House on Wednesday.
“Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating, large-scale losses in a matter of weeks.”
Days earlier, he struck a similar tone at an investor conference in Miami.
“[Iran is] not powerful anymore… they have no anti-aircraft, so we’re just floating over the top looking for whatever we want, and we’re hitting it,” Trump said.
“And we have another 3,554 targets left, and that’ll be done pretty quickly.”
Just a week before that, he dismissed the need for a ceasefire altogether.
“They don’t have any spotters, they don’t have anti-aircraft, they don’t have radar,” he told reporters.
“Their leaders have all been killed at every level.”
Those claims are unraveling fast. And as of publication, the president had yet to address the downed aircraft in Iran.
The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wasted no time mocking the U.S.
“After defeating Iran 37 times in a row… this war has been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Can anyone find our pilots?,’” he wrote on X.
New details about how Iran is fighting back only deepens the problem, with ABC News reporting that Iran used passive infrared detection systems to track and target the U.S. aircraft.
Which, if confirmed, means Iran may be tracking U.S. jets in ways American defenses cannot easily stop—blowing a hole in Trump’s repeated claims of uncontested skies.
On Thursday, CNN reported that Tehran has retained roughly half its missile launchers and continues to fire missiles and drones across the region.
At the same time, a New York Times analysis of U.S. intelligence reports indicated that Iran is rapidly repairing damaged missile bunkers, sometimes within hours, allowing launchers to return to operation soon after strikes.
The risks are also mounting on the ground as Iranian forces and civilians continue searching the crash zone.
The prospect of an American pilot being captured, and potentially used as leverage, now looms as a serious military and diplomatic risk.
For a war the White House claims is nearly over, this looks anything but finished.
The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
