As the U.S. waged war over the last five weeks, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly said Iran’s capabilities were decimated — including its anti-aircraft defenses, which they said were taken out by American forces.
That assertion came into question Friday when, according to several U.S. officials, Iran appeared to down a U.S. fighter jet, an F-15E, over its territory. One crew member was rescued, a U.S. official said. The status of the other crew member was not known and a search-and-rescue operation was under way, according to officials. Trump has been briefed on the incident, the White House said. The Pentagon has not commented.
Another official said two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search and rescue for the F-15E crew were struck by incoming fire and that an A-10 aircraft was hit in a separate incident and crashed in a neighboring allied country; its pilot was rescued.
On Wednesday, in his first primetime address to the American people since the start of the war, Trump extolled U.S. military might and threatened to attack Iranian power plants if Tehran failed to reach a deal to end the conflict. “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,” Trump said from the Cross Hall of the White House. “We are unstoppable as a military force.”
In that speech he also called Iran’s air force “in ruins” and said “their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed.” “Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating, large-scale losses in a matter of weeks,” he added.
It was not the first time the president described the operation as an ongoing success that enabled U.S. dominance of Iranian airspace. Addressing an investors’ conference in Miami, Trump again painted Iran as diminished on the battlefield and claimed U.S. forces were “just floating over the top looking for whatever we want, and we’re hitting it,” adding, “And we have another 3,554 targets left, and that’ll be done pretty quickly.” A week earlier he rejected the need for a ceasefire, saying it was unnecessary “when you’re literally obliterating the other side,” and asserted Iranian spotters, anti-aircraft, and radar were gone and many leaders had been killed.
The president’s assertion of air superiority was frequently echoed by Hegseth. Briefing reporters on March 4, Hegseth said that “in under a week” the U.S. and Israel would have “complete control of Iranian skies.” “I hope all the folks watching understand what uncontested airspace and complete control means,” he said, explaining it would allow U.S. forces to operate day and night, targeting Iran’s missiles, defense industrial base and leadership. “Iran will be able to do nothing about it,” Hegseth added.
On March 13, during a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, Hegseth said Iran “has no air defenses,” and declared Iran “has no air force. Iran has no Navy,” adding that missile and drone capabilities had been sharply reduced. Caine has characterized Iran as a “determined enemy” that was “adapting” as U.S. strikes degraded its capabilities.
In discussing an earlier attack on a base in Kuwait that killed six U.S. service members at the outset of the war, Hegseth acknowledged that while U.S. air defenses were “incredible,” occasionally “you might have one. Unfortunately, we call it a squirter that, that makes its way through.”