Trump boasts about 'subterfuge' in operation to rescue US airman in Iran
US President Donald Trump took a victory lap on Monday as he described how "hundreds" of soldiers were involved in an operation relying on "subterfuge" to rescue a downed airman after an F-15E warplane was shot down over Iran.
The plane was shot down on Friday, sparking a race between the US and Iran to see who could locate the pilot and weapons systems officer first. The pilot was rescued on Friday, but the second airman was only found on Sunday.
The US has been tight-lipped about the operation, sharing scant details about where the F-15E was shot down and where the rescues occurred. Trump on Monday compared the operation to "finding a needle in a haystack". He added that it was harder because the weapons systems officer was wounded.
"The heroic F-15 weapons system officer had evaded capture on the ground in Iran for almost 48 hours," Trump said. "That's a long time when you're in tough shape and when you're bleeding."
Parts of the rescue operation appeared to play out in real time, with Iranians searching for the airman recording it on their phones.
US helicopters and refuelling aircraft were spotted over the weekend in the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province of southwest Iran, sparking a manhunt that drew in soldiers, Basij paramilitary forces and ordinary Iranians.
Reuters reported that the F-15, however, was shot down in Isfahan province, where the US landed planes and special forces to extract the weapons systems officer.
Trump appeared to allude to the discrepancy between the locations at the White House, saying it was part of an operation to distract Iran.
"We were bringing them all over, and a lot of it was subterfuge. We wanted them to think he was in a different location because they had a vast military force out there. Thousands of people were looking, so we were scattered all over like we were right on top of them," he said.
The discrepancy drew the attention of open source intelligence analysts who noted that Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province is hundreds of kilometres away from Isfahan.
Some speculated that the US may have used the operation to rescue the pilot as cover to launch another mission to seize Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried at a nuclear site in Isfahan, which the US attacked in June.
Iran's foreign minister amplified that messaging on Monday, but did not provide any proof that another mission occurred.
"The possibility that this was a deception operation to steal enriched uranium should not be ignored at all," Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said.
Aircraft destroyed
Middle East Eye spoke with two former US intelligence and defence officials about the open source intelligence. Both sources said that the US appeared to use an unusually high number of military personnel, but likely did so to secure the landing zone and have additional firepower.
Iran has framed the operation as a defeat for the US because it lost C-130 airplanes, H-60 helicopters and at least one MQ-9 Reaper drone during the operation.
Trump said on Monday that the US was forced to destroy two planes that were "bogged down" in the sand, but dismissed the loss.
"We had a contingency plan which was unbelievable where lighter, faster aircraft came in and they took them [US soldiers] out. We blew up the old planes… because we had equipment on the planes," he said, noting their anti-aircraft equipment.
Trump said that the US used three helicopters in the operation.
The debris from the US landing site appeared to include the frame of an MH-6M Little Bird, which is a small manoeuvrable helicopter, experts said, that was likely used to retrieve the airman and bring him back to the landing site.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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