Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Rescues Officer From Downed Fighter Jet in Iran, Trump Says 54%
By Greg Jaffe0% Helene Cooper0% Yan Zhuang0% Aaron Boxerman0% Eric Schmitt0% Isabel Kershner0% Gabby Sobelman0% Erika Solomon0% Sanam Mahoozi0% Reham Mourshed0% Nicholas Kulish0% Julian E. Barnes0% Shirin Hakim0% Farnaz Fassihi0% Mika Gröndahl0% Lily Boyce0% Thomas Gibbons-Neff0% Stephen Castle0%
4/5/2026, 6:37:01 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 34 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Self-Serving Bias, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 22.3% saturation with 1,161 hits. Analysis detected 6,041 faulty-reasoning hits from 5,210 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 52.4% and a BS Rank of 54% (7,765 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 53.80% of the article peer group.
Military analysts say the American fighter jet downed in Iran on Friday was likely based at one of the two British airfields that host the largest American fighter jet operation in Europe.
According to the United States Air Force, its 48th Fighter Wing hosts thousands of personnel and four combat-ready fighter squadrons of F-15 Strike Eagles and F-35A Lightning II aircraft at R.A.F.
Lakenheath and at R.A.F.
Feltwell, both of which are in England.
Larger planes, including B-52 and B-1 bombers, have been stationed at a different British airfield, R.A.F.
Fairford.
How the American planes should be used in the war against Iran has proved a vexed issue.
With public opinion in Britain highly skeptical about the American bombing campaign, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised that the country will not get dragged into the conflict.
To the annoyance of President Trump, Mr.
Starmer refused to allow the U.S. military to use British bases for the war’s early strikes.
He reversed that position after Iran began retaliatory strikes in the Gulf and elsewhere.
One drone, thought to have been fired by Iran’s ally Hezbollah, struck a British military base in Cyprus.
The British government decided that American planes could take off from British bases, but for a “specific and limited defensive purpose” only — not to conduct offensive strikes.
After Iran began disrupting the flow of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, causing energy prices to spike, Mr.
Starmer adjusted his position again, saying that British bases could be used to strike Iranian targets in an effort to keep the vital waterway open.
Iran’s state broadcaster published images on Friday purporting to show the wreckage of the downed U.S. aircraft.
They showed the wingtip and top section of a vertical stabilizer from a U.S.
Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle, according to Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow who studies air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense-focused research institution in London.
He said the markings on the vertical stabilizer section seen in the photos were consistent with those of the 494th Fighter Squadron based at R.A.F.
Lakenheath.
As of Saturday, United States Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, and Britain’s defense ministry had not said whether the downed fighter jet was based at R.A.F.
Lakenheath.
Last month, there were unconfirmed reports that at least one of three U.S. aircraft downed over Kuwait in an apparent friendly-fire incident was from R.A.F.
Lakenheath.
An American warplane was shot down over Iran on Friday.
It is the first known instance of an American combat aircraft being shot down by Iran since the war began more than a month ago.
A rescue effort recovered one of the downed jet’s crew members from Iran, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
The fate of the other crew member remained unclear as of Saturday.
Here’s a look at how the two crew members of the F-15E Strike Eagle probably would have ejected.
The crew members then separate from their seats and parachute to the ground.
During the search-and-rescue operation for the two crew members on Friday, an American helicopter was hit by Iranian ground fire but managed to escape safely.
A second U.S. military jet crashed near the Strait of Hormuz at about the same time, and the lone pilot was rescued, two U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials have not said what caused the plane to go down.
The loss of the planes and the subsequent rescue efforts present military and diplomatic challenges for the United States, as Iran’s downing of the jet suggests that the country still has some command of its airspace despite heavy bombing from the United States and Israel during the war.
Israel attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical industrial complex in the city of Mahshahr on Saturday, a move that has effectively shut down all production across the sprawling complex, according to two senior Iranian oil ministry officials.
The airstrikes targeted two utility plants, known as Fajr 1 and Fajr 2, that provided the over 50 petrochemical plants operating inside the complex with the basic services needed to function — gas, power and industrial water, among others — according to Iranian state media reports and the two senior Iranian oil ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Hamed Shams, the head of marketing and communications for the oil ministry’s petrochemical industries, said on social media that the attacks had targeted vital infrastructure that not only supplies electricity to Mahshahr’s petrochemical plants but also, in summer, “plays a key role in providing electricity to 500,000” people in Khuzestan Province.
Israel’s military said that it had struck the petrochemical complex “responsible for the production of chemical materials used for weapons,” and that the sites were “central to producing materials for explosives, ballistic missiles and additional weaponry.”
Israel and the United States have intensified attacks on Iran’s critical infrastructure in the past few days, targeting the country’s two main steel manufacturing plants, pharmaceutical and scientific research centers, airports and seaports, according to state media reports.
The Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex, as the area is formally known, is one of Iran’s main petrochemical hubs, producing 72 million tons of petrochemical products annually, according to data from Iran’s oil ministry.
Located near the cities of Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini, a major industrial port, the industrial center is the leading employer of the area’s estimated 300,000 residents.
The petrochemical plants in Mahshahr produce a wide range of basic chemicals, polymers and other materials.
These outputs can feed into a variety of products, including plastics, clothing and textiles, fertilizers and medical equipment.
The two oil ministry officials said the plants’ total shutdown was an immeasurable blow to Iran’s already frail economy.
They said rebuilding the utility plants and bringing the productions lines fully online again could take about two years.
Hamid Hosseini, an oil and energy expert and a member of Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview that downstream industries, like food production, car manufacturing and textiles, that rely on the industrial center’s products would face a crisis when the war was over.
“These are civilian industries that had nothing to do with military use and should not have been attacked,” Mr.
Hosseini said.
“This is people’s livelihoods.
Social security funds have big shares in these companies, and so do many ordinary people.”
The Israeli military has said that the critical industries it has struck are often “dual use,” with both civilian and military applications, or have ties to the government and armed forces.
Experts say that even if a facility is dual use, there is still an obligation to weigh proportionality in attacks.
The governor of Khuzestan Province, Seyed Mohammadreza Mavalizadeh, visited the site after the attacks and told Iranian media that rescue teams and firefighters had responded quickly.
The governor’s office said five people had been killed and 170 injured.
Videos of the attack published on social media show large plumes of smoke and fire rising from the ground inside the complex.
Mr.
Mavalizadeh said Israeli airstrikes had targeted other sites in the zone in addition to the two utility plants, including the Razi, Karoun and Bandar Imam petrochemical plants.
Iran’s state television said the complex was evacuated after the attacks.
“Attacking Mahshahr’s petrochemical plants means attacking the heart of Iran, the vital arteries of Iran’s economy,” Mehdi Bostanchi, the head of a private industrial complex and a representative for a group of Iranian industrial leaders, said in a social media post.
Petrochemical goods represent about 25 percent of Iran’s total exports, with products going to about 60 countries, and provide a critical source of revenue, bringing in about $10 billion to $15 billion per year, according to Iranian media reports.
Petrochemical product sales have served as a main alternative source of revenue for Iran as it has tried to diversify its economy away from oil dependency.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that at least nine civilians were killed across Iran in the past 24 hours during U.S. and Israeli strikes.
The group recorded 272 attacks in 14 provinces on Saturday, with a total of at least 184 people injured or killed.
Tehran saw the highest number of strikes, followed by Khuzestan and Isfahan.
Kuwaiti authorities said early Sunday that drone strikes they attributed to Iran significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, forcing the shutdown of two electricity-generating units.
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation also said its oil complex in the Shuwaikh district in Kuwait City was targeted by Iranian drones early Sunday, sparking a fire, causing damage, and prompting the evacuation of the building.
No casualties were reported in either attack, the company and Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a joint statement.
A building housing several government ministries in Kuwait was significantly damaged after it was targeted by an Iranian drone on Saturday evening, the country’s Ministry of Finance said.
The Ministries Complex houses agencies including the finance, justice, and industry and commerce ministries.
No casualties were reported, the ministry said, adding that employees would work remotely on Sunday.
An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S.
Special Operations forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, President Trump said on social media early on Sunday.
The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, who is a weapons system officer, current and former U.S. officials said.
In the end, Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos extracted the officer in a massive operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel.
There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr.
Trump said.
All the commandos and the weapons officer returned safely, a senior U.S. military official said.
Rescue planes flew the injured airman to Kuwait for medical treatment.
“WE GOT HIM!,” Mr.
Trump exclaimed in the social media post.
“This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour.”
Mr.
Trump said that the rescued officer, an Air Force colonel, had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine.”
The two crew members of the F-15E Strike Eagle, the first lost to enemy fire in the monthlong war, had both ejected from the cockpit on Friday after Iran’s military struck their plane.
The jet’s pilot was quickly rescued, but its weapons systems officer could not be found, setting off an urgent search with major consequences for Mr.
Trump and the war that the United States and Israel launched on Feb.
28.
Finding the downed airman, who had been hiding behind enemy lines with little more than a pistol as defense, had been the U.S. military’s highest priority over the last 48 hours.
After ejecting from the F-15E, the officer hid in a mountain crevice, his location initially unknown to either Americans trying to rescue him, or Iranians trying to capture him.
The C.I.A. initiated a deception campaign to try to confuse Iranian forces, and convince them the airman had already been rescued and was moving out of the country in a ground convoy, a senior administration official said.
The agency also ultimately found the airman’s hiding place, passing the information on to the Pentagon, which mounted the rescue operation, the senior administration official said.
Mr.
Trump’s exultant post celebrating the Air Force officer’s rescue contrasted with his threat on Saturday morning to strike Iran’s power infrastructure if the government did not open up the Strait of Hormuz to cargo traffic.
“Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” Mr.
Trump wrote.
The downing of the F-15E and the crash of another U.S. warplane, an A-10 Warthog, a short time later on Friday, raised questions about how much capability Iran retained after a month of attacks.
Mr.
Trump hailed the rescue as evidence that Iran’s defenses had been badly damaged, if not destroyed.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he wrote.
The mission to save the crew member employed hundreds of special forces troops and other military personnel, dozens of U.S. warplanes, helicopters, and cyber, space and other intelligence capabilities.
The airman evaded Iranian forces for more than 24 hours, at one point hiking up a 7,000-foot ridgeline, a senior U.S. military official said.
U.S. attack aircraft dropped bombs and opened fire on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the area where the airman was hiding.
As U.S. commandos converged on the downed airman, they fired their weapons to keep Iranian forces away from the rescue site, but did not engage in a firefight with the Iranians, a U.S. military official said.
The airman was equipped with a beacon and a secure communication device for coordinating with forces mounting the rescue.
But the airman restricted the use of his beacon, because Iranian forces could have detected its signal as well.
A senior U.S. military official described the mission to rescue the airman as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. special operations given the mountainous terrain, the airman’s injuries and Iranian forces rushing to the location.
In a final twist after the weapons officer was rescued, two transport planes that would carry the commandos and the airmen to safety got stuck at a remote base in Iran.
Commanders decided to fly in three new planes to extract all the U.S. military personnel and the airman, and they blew up the two disabled planes rather than have them fall into Iranian hands.
The F-15E fighter jet was shot down in a region of Iran where there is significant opposition to the Iranian government.
As a result, the airman may have been able to rely on locals for shelter and assistance.
The crash also drew the attention of Iranian military forces, who were reported to have been scouring the area.
The Iranian government asked locals for help finding the downed airman, and had offered a reward for the airman’s capture.
The C.I.A. often also plays a role in making contact with civilians willing to help vulnerable troops stay alive, a process known as “unconventional assisted recovery.”
President Trump said in a social media post just after midnight that the Air Force officer who had been shot down in Iran had been brought out safely by U.S. forces.
“He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr.
Trump said.
He described a tense rescue operation with officials in the United States monitoring the officer’s location at all times and dozens of aircraft sent to retrieve him.
The weapons systems officer was one of two members of the F–15E Strike Eagle who ejected from the cockpit on Friday after Iran’s military shot down the plane.
The pilot had been rescued earlier.
An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S.
Special Operations forces in a risky night mission deep inside Iranian territory, President Trump said on social media early Sunday.
The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, a weapon systems officer, officials said.
The operation took commandos deep inside Iran and involved hundreds of special operations troops.
There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr.
Trump said.
The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr.
Trump added.
The airman was found a day before Mr.
Trump’s latest deadline for striking Iranian power plants, potentially ushering in a new phase of the conflict.
The president had threatened to attack unless Iran halted its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major waterway for Persian Gulf oil and gas.
Mr.
Trump has already postponed the deadline twice, saying there had been talks between the United States and Iran.
But Iranian officials have publicly dismissed the American demands, and his threat is now set for Monday.
For the past two days, the U.S. military was consumed by the search for the downed airman.
On Friday, Iranian forces downed the two-person F-15E Strike Eagle in the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being shot down by Iran since the war began more than a month ago.
Both ejected from the cockpit and the pilot was quickly rescued.
Another U.S. aircraft, an A-10 Warthog attack plane, crashed near the Strait of Hormuz at about the same time, and the lone pilot was rescued, two U.S. officials said.
The Iranian military said its air defense systems had hit an A-10.
The U.S. officials did not say what caused the plane to go down.
The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal.
On Sunday, Israel and Gulf nations reported attempted drone and missile strikes they attributed to Iran.
Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex.
A fire at a storage facility for Bapco Energies, Bahrain’s state-owned energy company, was doused on Sunday after an Iranian drone attack, the state news agency reported.
Israel kept up its attacks on Iran and its allies across the region over the weekend, bombarding the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Sunday after attacking Iranian energy facilities on Saturday.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group, in Lebanon and has signaled that Israel could launch a longer occupation of the south of the country.
The Israeli military said early Sunday that it had struck more than 120 targets in central and western Iran over the past 24 hours, including ballistic missile sites, drone production and launch sites, and air defense systems.
A fire at a storage facility for Bapco Energies, Bahrain’s state-owned energy company, was doused early Sunday after an Iranian drone attack sparked the blaze, the state news agency cited the company as saying.
The authorities in the United Arab Emirates are responding to several fires that broke out at the Borouge petrochemical factory, which were sparked by falling debris from successful air defense interceptions, the Abu Dhabi media office said early Sunday.
No injuries were reported, said the office, which did not provide details about the origins of the attack.
In a separate incident, Israel struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, Iran, on Saturday.
Since the start of the war in the Middle East, Iran has launched 23 cruise missiles, 498 ballistic missiles and a staggering 2,141 drones at the United Arab Emirates, according to the Emirati Ministry of Defense.
But the glittering towers of cities like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah stand largely unharmed, and fatalities have been minimal.
That is a testament to the effectiveness of modern military air-defense systems, which track and target missiles traveling faster than the speed of sound and shoot them out of the sky with another missile, saving many lives and sparing homes and property.
The wars in Ukraine and now the Persian Gulf have highlighted the crucial role interceptors play in protecting cities like Kyiv or Tel Aviv or Riyadh, not to mention American bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and other Gulf states.
But the supply chain behind those interceptors has been strained for years, stressed by the war in Ukraine, past engagements with Houthi rebels along the Red Sea and last year’s 12-day war with Iran.
Missile defense experts are sounding increasingly dire warnings that if the war with Iran continues, stockpiles could become dangerously low, leaving allies around the world vulnerable to attacks.
“We started this conflict with a big hole,” said Tom Karako , the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The center published a report on the depleting inventory of interceptors in December, before the current conflict even kicked off.
“The hole got a lot bigger over the last month as we keep shooting these things off,” Mr.
Karako said of the interceptors.
The dwindling supply of interceptors among the United States and its allies is in part attributable to Iran’s tenacious ability to go on the offensive — launching drones and missiles at Israel, American bases and civilian targets in the Gulf.
“Do not hope that you have destroyed our strategic missile production centers, long-range offensive drones” and modern air defense, a spokesman for the leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a video statement on Thursday.
Further, defense doctrine calls for two interceptors fired for each incoming missile, referred to as “shoot — shoot — look.”
That means defensive stockpiles are depleted twice as fast as the offensive weapons they are shooting down.
In the current war, the U.S. military coordinates air-defense systems with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and others.
They rely on a variety of launch systems — including Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, both fired from land, or Standard Missiles launched from Navy warships at sea.
An air-defense system is more than just a glorified quiver of missiles.
A THAAD battery , for instance, includes 48 interceptors divided among six launchers mounted on trucks, a command-and-control platform and a radar.
A Patriot battery also has a radar set and control station among its components.
In the opening days of the war, Iran conducted strikes aimed at communication and radar systems on at least seven U.S. military sites across the Middle East, trying to effectively blind the systems used to track incoming missiles.
It is unclear how successful the strikes were.
The number of interceptors in a nation’s arsenal is a closely guarded secret.
No country wants its enemy to know just when it might run out.
But analysis of Gulf state defenses suggest the waves of missile and drone attacks by Iran have sorely depleted the interceptor inventories in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
For instance, a report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA , a Washington research organization, estimated that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had expended more than three-quarters of their Patriot missile PAC-3 interceptor stockpiles, one of the main defensive missiles in their arsenals.
The report relied on an analysis of each nation’s prewar stockpiles and its potential interceptor use since the start of the conflict.
The governments did not respond to a request for comment on the JINSA assessment.
Intercepting missiles has become a routine part of warfare for the United States and its allies, especially Israel, for whom it is a daily part of domestic defense.
The interceptor systems provide a security blanket but are not foolproof.
Israel’s vaunted, three-tier missile defense system came under growing scrutiny after two Iranian ballistic missiles evaded air defenses near Israel’s main nuclear research facility and reactor last month.
Even when missiles are intercepted, civilians and property are not necessarily out of harm’s way.
Falling wreckage from the collision of two missiles can rain down on towns and cities; debris from an intercepted missile killed two people in Abu Dhabi last month.
The rise of cheap drones has complicated the math for militaries using expensive interceptors.
An adversary can attack with one-way drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars, forcing its enemy to deploy multimillion-dollar air-defense systems to repel them.
And the drones are much more easily and rapidly replaced.
A cease-fire with Iran would not completely solve the interceptor shortage, experts said.
Shortages in interceptor inventories are a global challenge.
That was most acutely obvious in Ukraine after Russia invaded four years ago, launching large volleys of missiles, and later drones, at Ukrainian towns and cities, bombardments that continue to this day.
In pleading for Western weaponry, Kyiv has regularly emphasized the urgent need for air-defense systems.
But it is not only Ukraine and Middle East countries that are counting on a steady supply of interceptor systems.
Countries like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are relying on missile batteries to deter potential aggression by North Korea or China, and with the nations of Western Europe getting serious about their defenses against Russia, the global nature of the challenge has become apparent.
President Trump has tried to goad the American defense industry into revving up the military supply chain.
He signed an executive order in January limiting stock buybacks and dividends by defense contractors unless they sped up production and quality.
In March, he hosted the chief executives of major contractors like Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin at the White House to discuss ramping up production.
Lockheed Martin announced plans in January to more than triple production of PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot batteries.
South Korean defense manufacturers have increasingly stepped in to try to fill the gap.
The United Arab Emirates began using a Korean-made air-defense system last month that had never before been tested in combat but that reportedly shot down 29 of 30 of the missiles and drones it targeted, according to the South Korean news media and a government official.
But the complexity of the interceptor systems makes them hard to mass produce quickly, said Tal Inbar , an Israeli senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a nonprofit based in Virginia.
Mr.
Inbar said that the kinds of interceptors used in THAAD or Arrow-3 systems require sub-components that are made to order, advanced electronics and a great deal of testing.
“There are no stockpiles of those systems,” he said, “so again you are relying on other factories and in some cases other countries.”
“It’s not like a factory producing 9-millimeter pistol ammunition,” he said.
The Israeli military launched a new round of strikes in Lebanon on Sunday, saying that it was attacking Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” in Beirut.
The announcement was issued about an hour after the military warned residents of the Lebanese capital to evacuate several areas on the southern outskirts of the city.
Iranian officials on Sunday sought to downplay the U.S. rescue of the downed American airman, denying that he was recovered after Iranian forces shot down a fighter jet on Friday.
An Iranian military spokesman portrayed the U.S. operation as a failure, in remarks published in state media that appeared to be aimed at a domestic audience.
Hours later, Fars, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, reported that the American search operation for the pilot was “ongoing.”
In a separate statement published by state media, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, a command center for the Iranian military, described the American operation as a “deception.”
Officials from Oman and Iran have held talks on making it easier for ships to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the Omani foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The ministry said on social media that the countries’ deputy foreign ministers and “specialists” spoke on Saturday, and each presented a number of proposals.
Iran has blocked most traffic through the strategic waterway since the start of the war, driving up global energy prices.
President Trump has threatened to strike Iranian power plants unless a deal to reopen the strait was reached, but he has delayed his ultimatum twice.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said on Thursday that Iran was drafting a protocol that would allow Iran and Oman to oversee transit.
Israeli warplanes had carried out five raids on targets in the southern outskirts of Beirut by mid-afternoon local time, Lebanon’s official news agency reported.
One strike hit a gas station belonging to Al-Amana, a fuel company that has been targeted by U.S. sanctions for alleged links to Hezbollah.
The Iranian authorities executed two men for their involvement in anti-government protests in January, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
The men, identified as Mohammad Amin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast, were hanged, according to the reports, which said they were convicted of attacking military sites.
Iran has executed at least 13 political prisoners since the start of the war on charges including armed rebellion, membership in militant groups, and espionage for Israel, according to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norway-based group that monitors activities in Iran.
Iranian authorities regularly extract forced confessions from defendants through pressure tactics including solitary confinement, threats against family members and torture, according to human rights groups.
Iran’s downing of an American fighter plane and the dramatic U.S. mission that followed to rescue a stranded airman has provided both countries with fodder to claim a victory, but this chapter could end up propelling them toward further escalation.
Iranian state media on Sunday published photographs of a charred American aircraft and declared that the downing of three American aircraft in three days was a triumph of “divine grace.”
Reposting the photograph, Iran’s hard-line speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said that “if the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.”
From the U.S. perspective, President Trump boasted about how American forces were able to pull off a risky ground operation using commandos to rescue a serviceman from deep within enemy territory, even as Iranian forces amassed in the area to hunt him down.
To have both sides so emboldened at this moment is particularly precarious for the region.
“From this point on, this war will become even more dangerous than it was before,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group, a research organization.
And with both sides claiming to have the advantage, he added, there is currently little hope of making progress on a diplomatic solution to end the crisis.
Iran is now one day away from Mr.
Trump’s ultimatum threatening to strike critical Iranian infrastructure if Tehran does not make a deal with Washington or open the strategic Strait of Hormuz shipping route.
Without an agreement, he has warned, U.S. forces will begin striking targets like Iranian power plants that could plunge Iran’s population of more than 90 million into darkness.
Time was running out, he warned before “all Hell” rains down.
Iran would most likely respond by bombarding similar strategic assets in neighboring Gulf countries, experts said.
The results of such an escalation could be devastating for millions of civilians in the region, and wreak further havoc on the global economy and the already volatile markets.
“They both still think they can gain the upper hand in this conflict and end it on their own terms,” Mr.
Vaez said.
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, on Sunday threatened to step up attacks on Iran’s petrochemical industry, saying the sector had brought in approximately $18 billion to support Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the past two years.
Katz was speaking a day after the Israeli military struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, in southwest Iran.
He said the industry “directly serves the Iranian surface-to-surface missile production industry,”and constituted a significant part of the Iranian economy that enables the government to produce the weapons it fires at Israel.
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