A daring rescue mission by the United States aimed at retrieving an air force officer trapped within Iranian territory allegedly involved around 100 special forces personnel, multiple aircraft, and strategic involvement from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Under the cloak of darkness, the operation sought to recover a crew member from an F15E Strike Eagle fighter jet, which was reportedly downed by Iranian air defenses last Friday.

The aircraft was shot down while flying over Isfahan province, resulting in the pilot and a weapons specialist ejecting separately. While the pilot was successfully rescued, the weapons specialist was left stranded in Iran.

How did the rescue mission unfold?

A source, who requested anonymity, shared with Reuters that the U.S. rescue mission over the weekend was proceeding smoothly until an unexpected challenge arose.

U.S. commandos managed to infiltrate deep into Iran without detection, scaling a 2-kilometer-high ridge to retrieve the stranded weapons specialist. They were on track to reach a secret extraction point before dawn on Sunday.

Then, operations abruptly came to a halt.

Two MC-130 aircraft that had ferried some of the roughly 100 special operations forces into rugged terrain south of Tehran suffered a mechanical failure and could not take off, a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Suddenly, elite commandos risked being stuck behind enemy lines.

Their commanders made a high-risk decision, ordering more aircraft to fly into Iran to extract the group in waves — a decision that left the elite commandos waiting for a couple of tense hours.

“If there was a ‘holy sh-t’ moment, that was it,” the US official said, who credited quick decision-making with saving the day.

The gamble worked. The rescue force was pulled out in stages, and US troops destroyed the disabled MC‑130s and four additional helicopters inside Iran rather than risk leaving sensitive equipment behind.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Covert tactics

The operation to retrieve the officer, who US President Donald Trump said was a colonel, started before troops entered Iran on Sunday and involved a series of interference and evasion tactics.

US air crews are trained in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) techniques if downed behind enemy lines, but few are fluent in Persian and face a challenge in staying undetected while seeking rescue.

A US source familiar with operational details said the officer sprained his ankle and hid in a crevice on a hilltop.

The official said the officer later established contact with the US military and authenticated himself — a critical step to ensure rescue forces were not walking into a trap.

The CIA had run a deception campaign earlier, hoping to confuse Iranian officials by planting information that US sources had already located the missing airman and were moving him before the operation took place, a senior Trump administration official said.

But the US military took additional steps, jamming electronics and bombing key roads around the location to prevent people from getting close, the US source familiar with the planning said.

The source told Reuters that the aircraft eventually sent to extract the officer and rescue forces were much smaller turboprop aircraft, capable of landing on small airfields and relatively light.

Throughout the operation, the White House, the Pentagon and the US military’s Central Command were uncharacteristically silent.

Trump was so relatively quiet that a local reporter went to check if he was in hospital.

Once the mission was complete, Trump was triumphant.

“Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the airman was injured, but “he will be just fine.”

What does Iran say?

Iran’s military said the US operation was “completely foiled”, although it has not given a full account of events.

On Sunday evening, ISNA news agency carried a photo posted by the Revolutionary Guards purporting to show the the debris of a destroyed airplane.

The Guards gave no further information except to add “more proof of the humiliating defeat of the liar Trump”.

Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari told state media US forces had used an abandoned airport in Isfahan province, which lies to the northwest of the area where the airman ejected.

He said the aircraft had been taking part in “a deception and escape mission … under the pretext of recovering the pilot of a downed aircraft”.

Iranian state media broadcast images of the charred wreckage of what appears to be a plane in a desert area, while officials said that two C-130 military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters had been destroyed.

In the footage, two charred propellers and engines can be clearly seen, with specialised open-source geolocating experts saying the images were taken about 50 kilometres south of the city of Isfahan.

The Wall Street Journal and other US media, citing unnamed officials, reported that American forces had blown up two C-130s after they became stuck, in order to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands, with other aircraft flown in to lift rescue teams to safety.

The governor of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province told Mehr news agency that five people had been killed and seven wounded in the Kuh-e Siah mountain area.

But the governor, Iraj Kazemijou, denied reports that US forces had landed there, saying they were “completely false and have no validity”.

For the latest from SBS News, download our app and subscribe to our newsletter.