American Pilot Rescued After Ejection Over Iran

Published: April 5, 2026, 20:25

Last Updated: April 5, 2026, 21:37

Reading Time: 2min – Video: 2min

American pilot who was ejected from his F-15, after being in Iranian territory for 36 hours, including in the crevasse of a mountain range, was found and extracted on Sunday, April 5. Seriously injured, he is being treated at an American base in Kuwait.

Spectacular combat in the middle of the night during the commando operation. American elite units push back Iranian security forces. Forty-eight hours after being ejected from his aircraft, the pilot, alive, was extracted from Iran on Sunday, April 5. “We got him“: with these words, Donald Trump announced it personally on his social network.

Soon after, Iranians broadcast images on television: charred debris, propellers, engines still smoking, scattered in the area where the pilot was extracted. An Iranian journalist, filming in front, explains that these are the carcasses of several American aircraft destroyed by the Iranian army during the rescue operation: “Investigations by experts determined that two military transport planes C-130 and two Black Hawk helicopters of the American army were destroyed.

Americans give a different version: they claim to have destroyed these aircraft so they would not fall into enemy hands. The extraordinary operation mobilized hundreds of men and several planes, which reportedly temporarily landed in Iranian territory on an abandoned airstrip in the southwest of Iran. It was in this mountainous province that the pilot was rescued. Seriously injured, he is currently being treated in Kuwait.

At the heart of the rescue was the most prestigious elite unit of the American Navy, the same unit that participated in the elimination of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 in Pakistan. An extraction that could have had a high human cost for the American army, but apparently succeeded. “The problem wasn’t the cost. Here, it was really, first and foremost, because it is in the Americans’ DNA to absolutely save Private Ryan. And secondly, in terms of imagery, show that we are the strongest and that we are the most capable of doing that, which is true by the way,” analyzes Jean-Antoine Duprat, geopolitician and former associate professor at La Sorbonne.

Israeli intelligence also contributed to the pilot’s rescue during these 48 hours.