Search for US Pilot Continues After Fighter Jet Downed Over Iran

The search for a missing American airman stretched into Saturday after an F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran's Khuzestan Province, marking the first confirmed loss of a U.S. aircraft inside Iranian territory since the war began five weeks ago and triggering one of the most dangerous search-and-rescue operations in the conflict's short history.

Both crew members of the two-seat Strike Eagle ejected after Iranian forces struck the aircraft on Friday. U.S. special forces located and rescued the pilot on Iranian soil. But the second crew member, the jet's weapons system officer, remained unaccounted for as of Saturday morning, with no confirmation of whether he successfully ejected.

The rescue effort itself cost the military additional aircraft and personnel. An A-10 Thunderbolt II, deployed in the specialized Sandy close-air-support role to protect the rescue helicopters, took Iranian fire near the Strait of Hormuz and crashed. Its pilot ejected over the Persian Gulf and was recovered safely. Two Black Hawk helicopters participating in the combat search-and-rescue mission were also struck. U.S. officials confirmed the Blackhawks were hit and crew members were injured, though both aircraft were able to return to base.

Iranian state media released photographs they claimed showed the F-15E wreckage, including an intact ejector seat and a stabilizer fin fragment bearing the inscription "U.S. Air Forces in Europe." Videos geolocated by multiple outlets to the Karoon River area, roughly 290 miles south of Tehran, showed a C-130 and two helicopters flying low and slow in patterns consistent with an active rescue operation.

The information battle surrounding the downed jet has been nearly as intense as the military one. Iranian state broadcasters broadcast public appeals urging citizens to capture the "enemy pilot," and authorities announced a bounty of 10 billion tomans, approximately $60,000, for any U.S. crew member handed over to police. A video circulated on social media claiming to show a captured American airman; BBC Verify and fact-checkers at Snopes both determined the clip did not show what was claimed.

Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf used the incident for pointed mockery, posting on X that the conflict had devolved from talk of regime change into a scramble to find downed pilots, then following up with a second post: "What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses."

Iran also claimed to have rejected a White House proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire, with the semi-official Fars news agency quoting an unnamed source saying Iran's response came "in the field" rather than in writing. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on that claim.

An Israeli official confirmed to the Associated Press that airstrikes were paused in areas relevant to the rescue effort. The Pentagon has recorded at least 365 U.S. service members wounded since the joint American-Israeli campaign against Iran began on February 28, following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The loss carries a significance beyond the crew still unaccounted for. The joint campaign had publicly prioritized dismantling Iran's air defenses, and U.S. and Israeli officials had repeatedly suggested dominance over Iranian airspace. A confirmed kill of a front-line strike aircraft, backed by Iranian-released wreckage photographs, punctures that narrative at precisely the moment President Trump is threatening to escalate further, warning this week that the United States "hasn't even started destroying what's left in Iran.