As American and Israeli forces search for a F-15 aircrew member forced to eject after being shot down over Iran, President Donald Trump isn’t yet ready to say what the U.S. will do if the missing crew member is harmed.
In a brief phone interview with The Independent, the president said he could not comment on what his course of action might be if Iranian forces get to the downed airman, the first American aviator to be shot down over enemy territory since an A-10 “Warthog” pilot ejected into Iraq after being struck by a surface-to-air missile in April 2003, just weeks into Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“We hope that’s not going to happen,” said the president, who ended the call shortly thereafter.
Trump’s expression of optimism regarding the fate of the missing Air Force officer came as Combat Search and Rescue forces from Israel and the United States were searching for the crew member, hours after they were forced to eject from their two-person fighter over Iranian territory.
The downed F-15 is the fourth American fighter aircraft — and the sixth military plane — lost since Trump started the massive air campaign against Tehran on February 28. Of those six, it is the only one so far to have been downed by enemy fire.
Yet the president has not publicly acknowledged the shootdown even as White House officials said he’d been briefed earlier in the day.
Trump has not been seen publicly since late Wednesday when he delivered a a disjointed national TV address in which he repeated the same justifications for his war with Iran that he’s been posting on social media throughout the month-long conflict.
At the time, the president bragged that “never in the history of warfare” had “an enemy suffered such clear and devastating, large-scale losses in a matter of weeks” and claimed Iran’s Air Force, Navy and ballistic missile capabilities were “in ruins” and “gone,” respectively.
As rescue efforts were ongoing, he took to his Truth Social account to advocate for stealing Iran’s natural resources, writing: “TAKE THE OIL, ANYONE?”
