The president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced this Sunday the rescue alive of the second pilot of the F-15 fighter that Iran had shot down on Friday over its territory and whom he worked hard to rescue, aware of the importance of an American war captive. The first pilot. Iran has tried to downplay the victory that Trump claims. The Revolutionary Guard has reported the destruction of several aircraft during the rescue mission and an Iranian military spokesman has cited at least one military transport plane and two Black Hawk helicopters among them. The Speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, later released a photo of a burned-out aircraft with the phrase: “If the United States achieves three more victories like this, it will be completely ruined.”
Trump has achieved a much-needed victory, in true Hollywood style, in a conflict that he has overcome several times. These rescue operations usually take place at dawn, very quickly and with small groups of elite forces. On this occasion, it lasted for hours, including daylight, and involved hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel, according to the newspaper. The New York Times.
The pilot had hidden in a mountain crevice. At first neither the Americans trying to rescue him nor the Iranians trying to capture him knew it. The CIA began a campaign of deception to make Tehran think that he had been found and taken out of the country in a land convoy. When he found the aviator’s hiding place, he transmitted the information to the Pentagon, which organized the rescue operation, according to the source cited by the newspaper.
“The United States Armed Forces have carried out one of the most daring search and rescue operations in the history of the country,” Trump celebrated in a long message on his social network, Truth. The US forces themselves fired on their C-130 transport planes because they had become stuck in the mud and they did not want them to fall into Iranian hands.
The regime in Tehran is resorting to victorious rhetoric. One of his spokespersons even claims that the rescue failed. Colonel Ebrahim Zolfagari, of the Jatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, has announced the downing of a US aircraft during the “desperate and hostile actions of the enemy to rescue its downed pilot.” The Revolutionary Guard speaks of two more devices.
Threats
With the most urgent concern of the United States resolved, the clock of threats continues to tick. Trump has reminded Tehran that the (new) deadline he has given him to reach an agreement to end the war expires on Monday if he does not want a phrase that he has uttered on other occasions without consequences. And Israel (which wants to expand and continue the war) is waiting for the green light from Washington to attack Iranian energy facilities next week, according to a senior defense commander cited by the Reuters agency. The mediators in the talks between Washington and Tehran affirmed on Thursday that the diplomatic channel has reached a “stalemate.”
Meanwhile, the crossfire continues. Iran continues to apply its strategy of responding in kind. The day before, Israel attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical complex, in the city of Mahshahr, which had to stop almost all operations due to the destruction of two key plants. The Israeli army justified it by saying that it “produces chemical materials used in weapons.”
This Sunday, Tehran did the same in the Gulf, another of its objectives. The Bahraini company Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company has reported an attack with Iranian drones that set fire to several of its operational units, although it is now extinguished and caused no victims, according to the state news agency. The United Arab Emirates had reported shortly before fires at a petrochemical plant in Abu Dhabi, due to the fall of projectile debris after the interception of an attack from Iran.
And from Yemen, the Houthis – in support of Iran – went again on Saturday (apparently without success) for Israel’s main airport, Ben Gurion, near Tel Aviv. In May 2025, when they launched missiles and drones against the country in retaliation for Israel’s massacre in Gaza, they managed to spread panic when a projectile hit near one of the terminals.
