Iran appears to have shot down a U.S. F-15E fighter jet over its territory on Friday, according to several U.S. officials who spoke to ABC News. The incident comes just weeks after Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly claimed that Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses had been completely destroyed by American forces.
One crew member was rescued, but the status of the other remains unknown, with a search and rescue operation currently underway. Two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the rescue effort were also struck by incoming fire. In a separate incident, an A-10 aircraft was hit and crashed in a neighboring allied country, though its pilot was safely rescued. The White House confirmed that Trump has been briefed, but the Pentagon has not commented.
The shootdown directly contradicts weeks of public statements from both Trump and Hegseth, who had painted Iran as a country with zero ability to defend its skies.
Trump repeatedly claimed Iran had ‘no anti-aircraft equipment’
Just two days before the jet was downed, Trump delivered his first primetime address since the war began, speaking from the Cross Hall of the White House. He threatened to target Iranian power plants if a deal to end the conflict wasn’t reached.
“We could hit it and it would be gone, and there’s not a thing they could do about it,” Trump said. “They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.”
In the same speech, he claimed Iran’s air force was “in ruins” and that “their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed.” He added: “Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating, large-scale losses in a matter of weeks.”
Earlier in the week, at an investors conference in Miami on Monday, Trump described Iran as a beaten adversary unable to protect its own airspace. “[Iran is] not powerful anymore. Within two days, I think the damage was done. But now it’s really done,” he said. “Now we’re just going after targets. And again, they have no anti-aircraft, so we’re just floating over the top looking for whatever we want, and we’re hitting it. And we have another 3,554 targets left, and that’ll be done pretty quickly.”
A week before that, Trump dismissed the idea of a ceasefire, saying it wasn’t needed “when you’re literally obliterating the other side.” He told reporters: “They don’t have any spotters, they don’t have anti-aircraft, they don’t have radar, and their leaders have all been killed at every level.”
Also, Karoline Leavitt said that Trump is always the most well-read person in the room, which many disagree with.
Hegseth echoed Trump’s claims of total air dominance
Hegseth has consistently backed up the president’s assertions. In a March 4 briefing, he predicted that “in under a week” the U.S. and Israel would achieve “complete control of Iranian skies.”
“It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC,” he said, adding: “Iran will be able to do nothing about it.”
On March 13, alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, Hegseth doubled down, saying Iran “has no air defenses. Iran has no air force. Iran has no Navy. Their missiles, their missile launchers and drones being destroyed or shot out of the sky. Their missile volume is down 90%. Their one-way attack drones yesterday, down 95%.”
Caine, however, has offered a slightly different view, calling Iran a “determined enemy” that was “adapting” even as its capabilities were being degraded. Hegseth himself had earlier acknowledged that despite “incredible air defenders,” occasionally “a squirter” might get through, a comment he made after an attack on a base in Kuwait killed six U.S. service members at the start of the war.
Friday’s incident now raises serious questions about whether Iran’s air defenses are as destroyed as the administration has repeatedly claimed.
