Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Searches for Missing Airman as Israel Launches Fresh Strikes on Tehran

Tehran4:54 p.m. April 4 Tel Aviv4:24 p.m. April 4 Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Searches for Missing Airman as Israel Launches Fresh Strikes on Tehran Iran downed an F-15E, the first U.S. warplane the country has shot down in the war. In southwest Iran, one person was killed when a projectile struck the perimeter of a nuclear power plant, Iranian media reported. The U.S. military was racing on Saturday to find an American airman who bailed out of a fighter jet that was shot down over Iran, as Israel launched a heavy wave of airstrikes on Tehran, shaking homes and leaving residents desperately seeking shelter. One member of the two-person crew of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet was rescued after it was destroyed, according to U.S. officials. Iranian forces were also pursuing the missing American, Iranian officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing operations. The status of the airman was unknown as of midday Saturday. It was the first time American personnel and combat aircraft have been downed by Iranian forces in the five weeks of war. On Friday, a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was hit by ground fire and a second U.S. military jet crashed near the Strait of Hormuz, the critical Persian Gulf waterway, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. The loss of the jets and the rescue efforts have presented military and diplomatic challenges for the United States — ones that would be compounded if the missing American were taken prisoner. President Trump has said the war was likely to continue for weeks. He told NBC News that the missing airman would not affect efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to end the war. At least one person was killed when a projectile struck the perimeter of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in southwest Iran on Saturday, according to the semiofficial Iranian Tasnim news agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had formally notified them of the episode but that no increase in radiation levels had been reported. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment. Israeli warplanes attacked Tehran on Friday night in what residents called some of the heaviest hours of bombardment since the conflict began. The Israeli military said it was striking Iranian aerial defense and ballistic missile sites in and around the capital. The downing of the jet has underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. Iran has continued to launch ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and Arab states across the Middle East, defying U.S.-Israeli efforts to degrade their capabilities. Mr. Trump had said on Wednesday that Iran had “no antiaircraft equipment” and that its radar had been “100 percent annihilated” in the intense U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign. The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, taunted the U.S. in a post on social media, writing on Friday: “This brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’” Here’s what else we’re covering: The downed jet: The American plane shot down over Iran on Friday was an F-15E Strike Eagle and has been essential in the U.S. air war over Iran because of its ability to fly long distances and carry a large amount of munitions. Read more › Iranian missiles: After its underground missile bunkers and silos are bombed, Iran digs them out and returns them to operation within hours, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Despite the U.S.-Israeli campaign, Iran still possesses powerful military capabilities. Read more › Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,607 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Friday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Thursday said at least 1,345 Lebanese had been killed since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 17 people had been killed as of Friday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded. Israel has not said publicly what it is doing to help locate the missing American airman whose jet was shot down over Iran. An Israeli official, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive plans, said Israel’s military had suspended attacks in the area where the airman was believed to have been lost and was sharing relevant intelligence with the Americans. The official did not say whether Israel’s operations were limited to those actions. Air-raid sirens blared in central Israel on Saturday, warning of incoming missile fire. The Israeli military said the attack was from Iran, which has been firing several volleys a day at Israel for more than a month. Four people were lightly wounded, according to the Israeli ambulance service. Images distributed by the service showed emergency workers approaching homes damaged in the attack. At least 17 people have been killed in the country, mostly by Iranian missiles, according to the Israeli authorities. Where Iranian officials said they were searching for American fighter jet crew member Iran’s foreign minister addressed on Saturday diplomatic efforts to end the war, saying Tehran had never refused to go to Pakistan, which has been leading mediation efforts. “What we care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed on us,” the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in a post on social media. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have recently assessed that Iran is not currently willing to engage in substantive negotiations to end the war due to deep mistrust of the United States and Israel, which attacked the country twice while talks over its nuclear program were ongoing. news analysis The downing of a U.S. fighter jet over Iranian territory and the intense search for one of its crew members has raised concerns that the airman could be captured and provide Iran with a potent asset that it could use for leverage against the United States. The rescue operation for the missing airman was in its second day on Saturday, with not only American troops conducting an all-out search but the Iranian military also trying to find the crew member, according to three Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. In one indication of Iran’s eagerness to find the airman, an anchor for a local affiliate of Iran’s state broadcaster read a statement on Friday on television calling on residents to capture the “enemy’s pilot or pilots” and turn them over alive to security forces for a reward. The possibility that Iran could capture the airman raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, a traumatizing event in American history that laid the foundation for nearly five decades of hostile U.S.-Iranian relations. The crisis, in which militant students took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and kept 52 Americans captive for 444 days, set a template for Iran that it would perfect in the coming decades as a way to capture global headlines, inflict pain on its adversaries and extract concessions. Since 1979, Iran’s government has repeatedly used hostage-taking as a tactic against its adversaries. It has detained Americans, Europeans and other foreign citizens, sometimes imprisoning them for years before releasing them, often in exchange for cash or the release of its own citizens imprisoned abroad. It has used hostages as propaganda tools and to establish leverage. The 1979 crisis came to define the final year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and served for many as a symbol of his failures. Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized Mr. Carter’s handling of the hostage crisis, calling it “pathetic.” In 1980, he told a journalist, “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don’t think they’d do it with other countries.” Hamidreza Azizi, an expert on Iranian security issues at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a research organization, said Iran could take one of two tacks if it manages to capture the airman. If the capture remains secret, the Iranians could approach the United States privately and cut a behind-the-scenes deal, demanding concessions in exchange for the crew member’s secret release. Or Iran could parade the airman in front of the cameras as propaganda. That, he said, was the more likely strategy. “They really do want to present this image of victory and also to humiliate Trump,” Mr. Azizi said. Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, pointed to a 2007 incident in which Iran captured British sailors, saying their vessels had trespassed in Iranian waters. The sailors were blindfolded, threatened and subjected to psychological pressure before giving videotaped statements in which they seemed to apologize. But there was no report of physical harm to them, Mr. Alfoneh noted. “Then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad maximized international media coverage as he announced their release, and personally shook their hands,” Mr. Alfoneh said in an email. He added that the treatment of the American airman would likely be different, given that the United States and Iran are at war. Even if the missing crew member is brought to safety, the episode underscores the risks of conducting missions over hostile territory against an adversary with the ability to retaliate. Rescue operations are inherently dangerous because additional American service members are put at risk. A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter involved in the search was hit by ground fire on Friday but escaped safely. And a second combat plane, an A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The pilot in that plane was rescued. Iranian officials, and even pro-government commentators, have said little so far about the missing crew member and what their fate might be if they fell into Iranian hands. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament and a powerful member of Iran’s political establishment, taunted the United States on Friday on X. “After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’” Mr. Ghalibaf wrote. “Wow. What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.” Turkey’s transport minister told local media on Saturday that two of the 15 ships owned by Turkish companies that had been waiting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began had transited through. In mid-March, Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu announced that the first ship had passed through, but on Saturday he did not specify when the second ship had done so. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed on Saturday that Iran had informed it of a projectile strike near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in southwest Iran. No increase in radiation levels has been reported, the agency said. The agency’s director, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in a social media post that he was deeply concerned about the incident and emphasized that nuclear power plants and surrounding areas must never be attacked to avoid nuclear accidents. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy arrived in Qatar on an unannounced trip, a day after she visited Saudi Arabia and met with the kingdom’s de-facto leader. Her trip marks the first time a leader of a European Union or NATO country has visited the Persian Gulf since the war began on February 28. Italy is highly dependent on energy imports. Meloni’s government said Friday that it was extending cuts in fuel excise taxes amid the global energy crisis. At least one person was killed when a projectile struck the perimeter of a nuclear power plant in southwest Iran, the country’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The explosion damaged one of auxiliary buildings of the plant, the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, but did not affect operations or damage the main section of the facility, the agency said. Three U.N. peacekeepers from Indonesia were the officers injured in an explosion in southern Lebanon on Friday, the Indonesian government said. Days earlier, three Indonesian peacekeepers were killed in southern Lebanon. Several other personnel with United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have been killed or injured since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began in early March. Several explosions were heard on Saturday at the Mahshahr Special Petrochemical Zone, a major oil industry hub in southwestern Iran, state media and semi-official news agencies in Iran reported. At least five injuries were reported, the outlets said. The Israeli military said Saturday that it had conducted a wave of airstrikes in the Iranian capital of Tehran, including against air defense sites and a ballistic missile storage facility outside of the city on Friday. The United States and Israel have both bombed missile and drone sites in an effort to degrade Iran’s fighting capabilities. U.S. intelligence reports have suggested that this goal has not yet been achieved. Multiple explosions were heard across Beirut on Saturday morning after Israel said it had launched a new round of strikes against Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital. Lebanon’s national news agency said the targets were in Dahiya, the southern suburbs where the Iran-backed militia holds sway. There were Israeli strikes elsewhere in the country overnight, the agency said, and one attack injured at least 10 people in Maarka, a town in Tyre district. Falling debris from an interception in Dubai struck the facade of a building housing the offices of the tech company Oracle on Saturday, city officials said. The statement said no injuries were reported. It did not specify what was intercepted and where it came from. A mother huddling with her small child in the bathroom, trying to shield them against the explosions rocking their neighborhood. Younger relatives frantically wheeling a 90-year-old bedridden patriarch to the hallway minutes before the windows shattered. A family of four descending from their 22nd floor apartment by staircase, avoiding the elevator for fear the power may go out. These were some of the scenes unfolding in Tehran, a sprawling metropolis of 10 million people, on Friday night and into the early hours of the morning Saturday local time. The capital, including dense residential neighborhoods in the leafy northern parts of the city, came under heavy bombardment as the war’s fifth week came to a close. Fifteen residents of Tehran said in telephone interviews and text messages that they were simply terrified. Many asked that their last names not be used for fear of retribution. “I have lost my concentration; I don’t know what will happen to us,” Golshan Fathi, a resident of Tehran, said in a text message from the bathroom she was hiding in. “I’m very, very worried.” Saghar, another resident of the capital, said in a series of text messages that her home had shaken so violently from the airstrikes that she thought it would collapse and bury her family. “I thought, ‘OK, it’s over. We are all dying.’” she said. “I don’t know what to say, what just landed was very near and terrifying.” For five weeks, ordinary Iranians have been caught in the cross-fires of the intensifying war with the United States and Israel. They have watched with dismay and anxiety as President Trump has threatened to bomb them “back to the Stone Age,” and as airstrikes have hit critical infrastructure — from steel factories, power plants and airports to scientific research centers and top universities. “Iran is being destroyed in front of our eyes,” wrote Afshin, a 58-year-old business owner, adding, “What if we are left here to rot in the hands of this regime with no connection to the outside world?” The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based rights organization, said that over the past 24 hours it had recorded 206 attacks in 13 provinces in Iran, with at least one civilian killed. In total, the group has recorded at least 1,607 civilian deaths since the start of the war. Augmenting people’s anxiety are the recent escalations from Iran’s leadership. On Friday, Iran shot down an American fighter jet in the southwest part of the country. While one of the two airmen in the jet was rescued, American rescue teams and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were both hunting the mountain terrains looking for the other on Friday. Iran also claimed responsibility for an American A-10 Warthog plane that crashed in the Persian Gulf around the same time as the jet, and shot at a military helicopter, which was forced to make a landing outside Iran’s borders. Government supporters said they hoped the missing American crew member would be taken as a prisoner of war. Earlier in the evening, crowds of government supporters gathered in several squares in Tehran waving flags and celebrating the downing of the American aircraft, according to video reports posted on state media. The front pages of several Iranian newspapers, posted online, celebrated with headlines that read, “The sky is under Iran’s control,” and “End to the fantasy of defeat.” But others worried of the consequences. “I hope the Americans find the pilot because if we capture him who knows what Trump will do to us,” said Reza, a 48-year-old accountant. Reza, who went to the basement of his high-rise building with his wife and two children on Friday night, said they were anxious about electricity and water going out. Iranians who were able to connect to the internet flooded social media with messages that captured the panic gripping the city. Milad Alavi, a journalist in Tehran, posted on social media, “Tonight’s explosions in northern Tehran have been suffocating. The population density in these areas is high, and people are in a panic, abandoning their homes.” The Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, said that over the past 24 hours it had recorded 206 attacks in 13 provinces in Iran, with at least one civilian killed. In total, the group has recorded at least 1,607 civilian deaths since the start of the war. HRANA said large-scale damage was reported at the Bandar-e Charak pier, where dozens of passenger and cargo vessels were docked, and that strikes had also hit Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, one of Iran’s elite schools. Iranian state media reported that images showed both a girls dormitory and the Laser and Plasma Research Institute at the university was among the sites hit. The institute was placed under sanctions by the European Union and others over alleged links to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Strikes on coastal sites like Bandar-e Charak reflect a broader pattern of attacks connected to maritime activity near the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blockaded. Residents of Iran’s capital, Tehran, report via text messages that there are heavy airstrikes across the city in the early hours of Saturday. Some say they could see several huge explosions and fires in the northern part of the city, on the slopes of the mountains that tower over Tehran. The strikes come as the U.S. military and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are both searching foran American airman whose aircraft Iran shot down in southwest of the country. “I’m hiding in the bathroom,” said Golshan Fathi in a text message. “The strikes on my neighborhood are terrifying. I don’t know what will happen to us.” She lives in the northern parts of the city on the mountain slopes and said there were explosions all around her. Senator Tammy Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs and partial use of her right arm when a rocket hit her Black Hawk helicopter during the Iraq war, issued a statement pleading for the recovery of the American airman who is missing after being shot down over Iran. “As someone shot down behind enemy lines, my heart goes out to the crew members and their loved ones who are waiting for answers,” Duckworth said on social media. “It’s a relief one servicemember has been found and rescued, and I’m grateful for those risking their lives to look for the one who remains missing.” Video posted on social media and verified by The Times apparently shows Iranians firing at low-flying helicopters in southwest Iran. This was in the same area that other U.S. military aircraft were seen conducting search-and-rescue operations after Iran shot down a F-15E fighter jet. President Trump has said that the United States has destroyed Iranian military capabilities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted that the U.S. military had achieved “total air dominance” in the war with Iran. Yet the news that Iran had shot down an Air Force F-15E fighter jet on Friday showed that Iran retained the ability to strike back, however degraded. That ability had been on vivid display in recent weeks as Iran continued to send waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf states, destroying American aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia, injuring around two dozen troops in the process, and on Friday striking a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait. Iran has kept much of its arsenal hidden underground in an effort to preserve its capabilities in the face of the recent onslaught, which experts said could have protected at least some systems from the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. And while underground bunkers and silos can appear at first to be damaged, in reality, Iran has been able to quickly dig out the launchers and fire them again, according to U.S. intelligence reports. “Iran has been basing its resiliency on underground missile cities and tunnels and bunkers everywhere,” said Federico Borsari, a non-resident fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “It is quite possible that some Iranian air defense assets are still operational and hidden and concealed in many locations across the country.” Iranian air defense could have used a Third Khordad missile system, which is a medium-range surface-to-air system, to shoot down the fighter jet. “These are mobile systems,” Mr. Borsari said of Iran’s capabilities. “They are based on a truck which can move and you can conceal those systems.” The downing of the fighter jet on Friday was the first known instance of an American combat aircraft going down in hostile territory during the current conflict in Iran. Up until now, the United States and Israel had enjoyed largely unfettered access to the skies over Iran. Military experts caution that air superiority does not mean that there are no threats. “It means the threats are not prohibitive to effective operations,” said a former Air Force officer who could not speak publicly about Iranian capabilities. “In conflict there is risk, including risk of getting shot down, even when we have air superiority.” The Iranian strategy has not been trying to defeat the United States and Israel in a conventional head-on confrontation, but rather trying to survive and inflict as much damage as possible. Some Iranian air defense systems can be kept “in storage somewhere, in bunkers or in tunnels, and you can take them out if you know that the threat is present in your area,” Mr. Borsari said. “They are not necessarily sitting ducks because they can be moved,” he added. The U.S. military was confident enough in its control of Iran’s skies that it was flying B-52 bombers over the country, despite the fact that the bombers are large and not very fast, more vulnerable to many antiaircraft systems than more agile fighter jets or stealth bombers. “This is dangerous business and the risks are real,” the former Air Force officer said. “It is not a video game, and the adversary is a thinking adversary in a desperate position.” In his first remarks since a U.S. fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday, President Trump declined to comment to NBC News about the search and rescue mission for a crew member who is believed to have survived and to still be in the country. He also said the shooting down of the F-15E fighter would not affect negotiations over a cease-fire with Iran. Iranian operatives have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by American and Israeli bombs, returning them to operation hours after an attack, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Iran has also retained a significant amount of its missiles and mobile launchers, the reports say. The Pentagon and White House this week claimed to have made substantial progress against Iran. At a briefing this week, the Pentagon said it had struck 11,000 targets in Iran in five weeks of war. But American intelligence agencies have cast doubt on how close the United States is to destroying Iran’s missile capability, a key goal in the war. While U.S. intelligence agencies have not estimated the number of remaining launchers with high confidence, Iran retains the ability to use its remaining arsenal of ballistic missiles and missile launchers to attack Israel and other countries in the region, according to American officials briefed on the intelligence. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, has outlined the “severe diminishing” of Iran’s missile launch capability as one of the key war aims. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spoken repeatedly about the damage the U.S. and Israeli attacks have done to Iran, and the declining numbers of Iranian missile strikes. “Yes, they will still shoot some missiles, but we will shoot them down,” Mr. Hegseth said on Monday. “Of note, the last 24 hours saw the lowest number of enemy missiles and drones fired by Iran. They will go underground, but we will find them.” As Mr. Hegseth and White House officials have pointed out, Iran’s rate of missile and drone launches has fallen sharply since the beginning of the war. “Here are the facts: Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks are down 90 percent, their navy is wiped out, two-thirds of their production facilities are damaged or destroyed, and the United States and Israel have overwhelming air dominance over Iran,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. That reflects the success of the U.S. and Israeli strikes, to a degree. But American intelligence agencies also believe that Iran is keeping more of its launchers in bunkers and caves to protect them from attack. Iran, according to American officials, wants to retain as much of its missile launch capacity as it can, so that it can continue to apply pressure if the war drags on, or threaten the region after it ends. Even with its more careful use of its launchers, and its reduced arsenal, Iran has continued to strike at Israel. Iran has launched about 20 missiles a day at Israel, firing one or two at a time, according to current and former American officials. A Western official said on Friday that Iran was firing 15 to 30 ballistic missiles and 50 to 100 one-way attack drones a day. Former officials said fractures inside the Iranian government have hampered command and control, making it difficult for Iran to launch large numbers of missiles at once. Precise assessments of Iran’s current capability have been unclear because Iran is deploying significant numbers of decoys, and the United States is not sure how many of the apparent launchers it has destroyed were real. While the U.S. has an estimate of Iranian missile launchers from before the war, that number was not precise. It has also been difficult to assess how many launchers may be in bunkers or caves struck by American or Israeli airstrikes. And while the underground bunkers, caves or silos can appear at first to be damaged, in reality Iran has been able to quickly dig out the launchers and fire them again. CNN earlier reported that Iran retains half of its missile launchers. Officials said that number falls within the range detailed in intelligence reports, but that the reports did not offer specific numbers of the remaining launchers. Haaretz, the Israeli publication, reported earlier that Iran had used bulldozers to dig out missile launchers that had been buried, or “corked,” in underground bunkers. Aaron Boxerman in Jerusalem and Mark Mazzetti in Washington contributed reporting. A U.S. Air Force UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was hit by Iranian ground fire on Friday during the operation to rescue the crew of a downed F-15E Strike Eagle jet, American and Israeli military officials said. The helicopter crew managed to fly the helicopter to safety in Iraq, the officials said. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards closed off and searched an area on Friday where they believed an American airman who was shot down might be, according to three officials familiar with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military matters. The search was carried out by troops and local residents. There were no reports the searchers found anyone. The area is in the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province in southwest Iran. As the U.S. military mounts a search and rescue operation for a crew member of an F-15E fighter jet shot down in Iran on Friday, the remaining crew member will most likely be looking for a place to hide until that person can be safely rescued, probably by helicopter. The aircraft carries a standard crew of two, a pilot and weapon systems officer. Both crew members of the F-15E ejected. Later on Friday, one was rescued from Iranian soil, U.S. and Israeli officials said. While the fate of the other crew member was unclear, military pilots are trained in principles called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, for situations in which U.S. military planes are shot down over hostile territory. The first step is to eject safely from the aircraft via parachute, according to Adm. William J. Fallon, a former commander of U.S. Central Command. Once on the ground, pilots must find a secure place to evade capture from enemy sources, and they must use radios in their kits to share their locations with U.S. forces, he said. Then, the U.S. military will make every effort to rescue the survivors. U.S. Central Command keeps multiple task forces near Iran — including in Iraq and Syria — for search and rescue operations in the event that American warplanes are shot down. “Assuming they ejected, they may be alive somewhere on the ground,” Admiral Fallon said of the crew whose plane was downed on Friday. “The key factor in my mind is time and day. It’s probably close to sunset, and that’s good, because we typically have an advantage at night with our search- and-rescue people.” Two news outlets affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Fars and Tasnim, said that helicopters were searching for the pilots, citing unnamed sources. The Fars news agency said it was unclear where the helicopters were from, while Tasnim reported that the copters were American and that one had been forced to retreat after coming under fire. For cases in which individuals are captured or taken hostage by enemy forces, pilots are meant to draw on resistance training to deal with extreme stress, interrogation and possible torture while in captivity. Other factors could shape the success of a rescue effort. Iran has expansive remote territory, which may improve the odds of pilots trying to hide, said Admiral Fallon. He added that it would be to the pilots’ advantage if they were in a dark area with lots of cover, like a dense forest, and away from major population centers. But training can go only so far. Food, water, injury and pursuit by enemy forces can make surviving on the ground harrowing. And with no U.S. troops on the ground in Iran, the recovery effort will have to deal with hostile territory, antiaircraft fire and changing weather to find and save them. Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting. American forces rescued an airman whose F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran, but the uncertain fate of a second crew member prompted a risky search operation in the country, U.S. and Israeli officials said on Friday. Another U.S. Air Force combat plane crashed in the Persian Gulf region at about the same time the F-15E was shot down, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The lone pilot in that plane, an A-10 Warthog, was rescued. The officials provided scant details about the A-10 crash, including how and where it happened beyond saying it was near the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have boasted in recent days that U.S. and Israeli strikes have decimated the Iranian regime and military. Mr. Hegseth said earlier this week that the United States had achieved such control of Iran’s skies that it was flying B-52 bombers directly over Iranian territory for the first time since the war began. But the downing of the F-15E and the damage to the A-10 underscores how a weakened Iranian military can still fight back with a limited but still lethal arsenal of missiles and drones. The loss of the F-15E Strike Eagle is the first known instance of an American combat aircraft going down in hostile territory in the monthlong U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Three Air Force F-15Es were shot down by friendly fire over Kuwait on March 2, and all six crew members in that episode ejected safely. The U.S. military’s Central Command keeps multiple task forces set up near Iran for search and rescue operations in the event that American warplanes are shot down, including in both Iraq and Syria, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share operational details. But such an operation is extremely dangerous because Iran still retains antiaircraft weapons and, without the support of U.S. troops on the ground, the loss of recovery aircraft to hostile fire can turn an already difficult situation into a catastrophe. On Friday, a U.S. UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter involved in the rescue efforts for the F-15E was hit by ground fire but was able to keep flying and escaped safely, U.S. and Israeli officials said. Open source images show U.S. military aircraft, primarily transport helicopters and cargo planes, over Iran. U.S. forces would not launch this type of a mission without verified crew contact or an active ejection seat beacon, a U.S. fighter pilot said. The pilot spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe current military operations. Rescue operations are also inherently dangerous because additional American service members are put at risk over hostile territory. In June 2005, a rescue mission that was part of an operation called Red Wings went horribly wrong. Rescuers were sent after a team of four U.S. Navy SEALs who had been ambushed by Taliban forces in eastern Afghanistan. A rescue helicopter was shot down, killing 16 service members. In an address to the nation on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump said the United States was on track to complete its military objectives in Iran soon. “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” the president said, promising intense bombing. Mr. Hegseth quickly repeated his boss’s words on social media. “Back to the Stone Age,” Mr. Hegseth wrote. The F-15’s ability to fly long distances and carry a large amount of munitions has made it essential for the U.S. air war over Iran. The F-15 can carry up to 24,500 pounds of ordnance but it typically flies with about 10,000 pounds of munitions, according to military documents. American combat aircraft losses have been relatively light since the Iran war started on Feb. 28. In addition to the three F-15Es shot down by friendly fire, a KC-135 tanker crashed in western Iraq after an apparent midair collision with another tanker, resulting in the deaths of six airmen. By comparison, the United States lost 42 combat aircraft in the 43-day air campaign of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, according to David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who was a main architect of the operation, Desert Storm. In his first remarks since the fighter was shot down, Mr. Trump declined to comment to NBC News about the search and rescue mission. But he said the incident would not affect negotiations over a cease-fire with Iran. The search for the downed crew in Iran is among the most intense American military rescue operations since two missions during the Balkans wars in the late 1990s. In March 1999, an F-117A stealth fighter, the premier attack plane in America’s arsenal at the time, was shot down over the former Yugoslavia. Hours later, helicopters swooped in to snatch up the pilot after he had signaled his rescuers with an emergency beacon. Nearly four years earlier, in June 1995, Capt. Scott F. O’Grady’s Air Force F-16 fighter jet was shot down by a SA-6 missile over Bosnia. Captain O’Grady evaded capture for six days, scrounging for water and digging for ants to eat, before he was rescued. Yeganeh Torbati contributed reporting from Istanbul. Tyler Pager contributed reporting from Washington.