US forces have begun search and rescue operations, sources said
A US fighter jet has been shot down over Iran, three US sources corroborate reports from Iranian state media.
US forces initiated rescue operations, the sources said. Possible rescue efforts appear to have been recorded in a video published on social media and geolocated by CNN.
The state agency Tasnim said the search for missing crew members “has so far not been successful”. Separately, on Fars News, a presenter said that a reward was being offered to anyone who captured one or more “enemy pilots”.
It was not immediately clear where in Iran the fighter jet crashed. The US military and the White House did not comment on the situation or the location of the pilots.
A video geolocated by CNN showed several military aircraft flying low over Khuzestan province, in central Iran.
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In the video, a plane can be seen flying close to the ground while two helicopters follow it closely – a formation that suggests an in-flight refueling operation. The video was recorded on a bridge over the Karoon River, about 470 km south of Tehran.
The incident marks the first time that a US aircraft has been shot down over Iran during the conflict. Early in the war, three F-15 fighter jets were mistakenly shot down in a friendly fire incident by Kuwaiti air defenses.
This comes at a time when Trump administration officials have repeated that the war is essentially won and that the US has air superiority over the country. Last month, President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office that the US “won this, because this war has already been won, the only ones who like to keep it alive are the fake news.”
“[Temos] literally planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country. They can’t do anything about it,” Trump said.
Iranian state media outlets on Friday released photos of what they claimed to be the, showing small pieces of what appears to be an F-15. The photos show a partial “US Air Forces Europe” logo on the tail of an F-15 and red and white stripes on the top of the tail.
Another piece of debris – with the words “CAUTION, USE NON-MAGNETIC FASTENERS ONLY” – appears to match the rear part of an F-15 that extends between one of its two engines and the horizontal stabilizer. “From the structure, it certainly looks like an F-15, and from the stripe markings on the tail, from the 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom,” Peter Layton, a researcher at the Griffith Asia Institute and former Royal Australian Air Force officer, told CNN.
Several Iranian state media outlets, including Press TV, published the images along with a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stating that Iranian forces shot down an F-35 stealth fighter jet in central Iran.
