Trump recounts rescue of 2 downed airmen in Iran: ‘We could have ended up with 100 dead, as opposed to one or two’
US President Donald Trump uses his White House press conference to talk up the operation to rescue a fighter jet crew member stranded in Iran after his plane was shot down.
Trump says he “ordered the US armed forces to do whatever was necessary to bring our brave warriors back home,” acknowledging that it was a “risky operation.”
“We could have ended up with 100 dead, as opposed to one or two,” Trump says. “It’s a hard decision to make, but in the United States military, we leave no American behind.”
He says 21 aircraft took part in the search for the pilot and the second crewman, flying “in broad daylight over Iran for seven hours, at times, facing very, very heavy enemy fire.”
“This first wave of search and rescue forces successfully located the pilot of the F-15, and he was extracted from enemy territory by an HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter as our warriors faced gunfire at very close range,” Trump says.
Trump says the second crewman, a weapon system officer, “landed a significant distance away” from the pilot.
He “was injured quite badly and stranded in an area teeming with terrorists from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Trump says.
“Despite the peril, the officer followed his training and climbed into the treacherous mountain terrain,” climbing as far as he could away from the crash site in order to evade capture, Trump recounts.
“He scaled cliff faces while bleeding rather profusely, treated his own wounds, and contacted American forces to transmit his location” using a “a very sophisticated beeper type apparatus,” Trump says.
A massive operation involving 155 aircraft was then mobilized to rescue the airman.
The operation involved a great deal of “subterfuge” because the US wanted Iran to think the airman was located in a different location than where he actually was, Trump says.
Thousands of American troops were sent to look in areas that the US knew were not where the downed airman was located, he says.
“In a breathtaking show of skill and precision, lethality and force. America’s military descended on the real area, engaged the enemy, rescued the stranded officer, destroyed all threats and exited Iranian territory while taking no casualties of any kind,” Trump says, touting the wounded airman for evading capture on the ground in Iran for nearly 48 hours.
The US president confirms that two “old planes” used in the operation got stuck in wet sand and that a decision was made to blow up the aircraft so that the technology couldn’t fall into Iranian hands.
“Faster, lighter planes” were flown in to extract the soldiers who participated in the rescue mission, he says, adding that he was most impressed by the fact that the US forces had a contingency plan in place.
Trump says the US troops were extracted in 15-minute intervals.
“God was watching us… We were in Easter territory,” Trump says, highlighting that the rescuing troops came under heavy enemy fire.
