Details emerge on efforts to retrieve American pilot shot down in Iranian territory

US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday the dramatic rescue of a downed airman whose fighter jet crashed over Iran, but Tehran claimed the mission was “foiled”.

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The facts surrounding the incident remain unclear, with social media being flooded with misleading or fake images, and little is known about the airman's identity, except that he was the weapons system operator on the advanced F-15E fighter jet shot down last Friday.

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The pilot of the jet was rescued by special forces in a daylight mission on Friday, shortly after the crash in the rugged Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province of southwest Iran, according to Trump.

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After ejecting from the plane, the missing weapons expert reportedly shouted “God is good” over the radio, reflecting his firm religious beliefs, as cited by the Axios news site, quoting Trump and US officials.

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US aviators, including the rescued airman, undergo Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training, which includes combat vests containing a radio/GPS-coded beacon, a communication device, water, food, first-aid material, and a pistol.

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The airman was wounded after his ejection but could still walk, and reportedly scaled a 2,100-metre (7,000-foot) ridgeline in the mountains before hiding in a crevice, according to The New York Times and Axios, with Trump stating that he had been “seriously wounded”.

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Following the rescue, the airman was transported to Kuwait, as reported by CBS News.

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Iranian authorities had urged local people and tribesmen to join security forces in searching for the airman, realizing the potential political and military value of capturing him alive, sparking a race over the weekend.

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Images were posted on social media of US aircraft and helicopters flying low over Iran, as US intelligence agency the CIA played a key role in locating the airman and launched a “deception campaign” aimed at convincing Iranian authorities that he had already been discovered, as reported by The New York Times and The Financial Times.

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The extraction operation, which involved “dozens of aircraft” and hundreds of special operations troops, including Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos, was launched overnight on Saturday-Sunday, according to US media reports and Trump.

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The Navy commandos were tasked with extracting the airman, while US attack aircraft provided cover, as cited by The New York Times, quoting unnamed officials, and the airman was rescued as Iranian forces converged on the spot, with US forces firing their weapons to keep them at bay.

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Trump claimed that no American lives were lost during the operation, and the success of the mission was a significant achievement.

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Iran's military claims that the US operation was “completely foiled”, but it has not given a full account of events, with the ISNA news agency carrying a photo posted by the Revolutionary Guards purporting to show the “skull of an American soldier amid the debris of a destroyed airplane”.

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The Revolutionary Guards gave no further information, except to add “more proof of the humiliating defeat of the liar Trump”, as Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari told state media that US forces had used an abandoned airport in southern Isfahan province.

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Zolfaghari stated that the aircraft had been taking part in “a deception and escape mission… under the pretext of recovering the pilot of a downed aircraft”, as Iranian state media broadcast images of the charred wreckage of what appears to be a plane in a desert area.

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Officials claimed that two C-130 military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters had been destroyed, with specialised open-source geolocating experts claiming that the images were taken about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the city of Isfahan.

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The Wall Street Journal and other US media, citing unnamed officials, reported that American forces had blown up two C-130s after they became stuck, in order to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands, with other aircraft flown in to lift rescue teams to safety.

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The governor of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, Iraj Kazemijou, told Mehr news agency that five people had been killed and seven wounded in the Kuh-e Siah mountain area, but denied reports that US forces had landed there, saying they were “completely false and have no validity”.

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Trump also referred to another operation inside Iran to rescue “another brave pilot… which we did not confirm, because we did not want to jeopardize our second rescue operation”, in his message on Sunday.