One crew member rescued and second missing as US fighter jet shot down in Iran
A US fighter jet was shot down in Iran and one of two crew members was rescued, officials said, the first aircraft downed since the war began nearly five weeks ago.
The whereabouts of the second crew member was unknown.
It marked a major escalation in the conflict just two days after President Donald Trump said in a national address that the US has “beaten and completely decimated Iran” and was “going to finish the job, and we’re going to finish it very fast”.
Three people familiar also confirmed that a search had been under way.
All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitivity of the situation.
No official details were released and The Pentagon notified the House Armed Services Committee that the status of a second service member is not known.
The circumstances that downed the plane were at first unclear.
But in an email from the Pentagon obtained by The Associated Press, the US military said it received notification of “an aircraft being shot down” in the Middle East, without providing more details.
It was not clear if the aircraft crashed or was shot down or whether Iran was involved.
Neither the crew’s status nor where the aircraft went down was immediately known.
The New York Times earlier reported that the second aircraft went down.
The incidents happened as Iran also fired on targets across the Middle East, keeping the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbours, despite US and Israeli insistence that Iran’s military capabilities have been all but destroyed.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have roiled stock markets, sent oil prices skyrocketing, and threatened to raise the cost of many basic goods, including food.
An anchor on the channel urged residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to police and promised a reward.
It was the first time the US has lost aircraft in Iranian territory during the conflict and could mark a new level of pressure being placed on the US military.
Throughout the war, Iran has made a series of claims about shooting down piloted enemy aircraft that turned out not to be true.
Iranian state media said in a post on X that Iran’s military shot down a US F-15E Strike Eagle.
The aircraft is a variation of the Air Force fighter jet that carries a two-person crew consisting of a pilot and weapons system officer.
Alan Diehl, a former investigator for the Air Force Safety Centre, said the Strike Eagle has an emergency locator beacon in a survival kit that can be set to activate automatically or manually.
The Pentagon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
News about the downed aircraft came after Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery came under Iranian attack, and the state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp said firefighters were working to control several blazes.
Kuwait also said an Iranian attack caused “material damage” to a desalination plant.
Such plants are responsible for most of the drinking water for Gulf states, and they have become a major target in the war.
Authorities in the UAE shut down a gas field after a missile interception reportedly rained debris on it and started a fire.
Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, but it was not immediately clear what was hit.
A day earlier, Iran said the US hit a major bridge, which was still under construction, killing eight people.
In Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion in its fight with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant group, an Israeli drone strike on worshippers leaving Friday prayers near Beirut killed two people, according to the state‑run National News Agency.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes.
More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, 19 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 US service members have been killed.
More than 1,300 people have been killed and more than one million displaced in Lebanon.
Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.
World leaders have struggled to end Iran’s stranglehold on the strait, which has had far-reaching consequences for the global economy and has proved to be its greatest strategic advantage in the war.
The UN Security Council was expected to take up the matter on Saturday.
On Friday, he said in a post on social media that: “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.”
Spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, were around 109 dollars (£82) on Friday, up more than 50% since the start of the war, when Iran began restricting traffic through the strait.
Former Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif — a diplomat with long experience negotiating with the West who remains close to a pragmatic wing of Iran’s leadership — wrote on Friday in Foreign Affairs magazine that the time has come to end what he referred to as a stalemate.
The US and Iran have proposed duelling plans, and Mr Zarif’s proposal included elements of both in a sign part of Iran’s leadership might be willing to negotiate.
Iran “should offer to place limits on its nuclear programme and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions — a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now”, he wrote.
It is not clear how much to read into the proposal from Mr Zarif, who has no official position in Iran’s government, but would likely not have published such a piece without at least some authorisation from senior leaders.