It's Official: US Boots-On-Ground Deep Inside Iran Amidst Another Day of Humiliating Losses
The morning broke with news of a large-scale US operation to supposedly extract the second downed pilot (WSO - Weapons Systems Officer) from Iran, who had ejected from his shot-down F-15E on Thursday. The scale of losses for this operation alone turned out to be massive, as the US lost hundreds of millions worth of planes allegedly getting the airman back to safety.
The operation involved all kinds of Special Forces units which amounted to “boots on ground” inside Iran for the first time—at least officially.
The story is roughly as follows:
The F-15E went down over “southwestern Iran” on Thursday, with the second crewman reportedly making first radio contact around noon on Friday, wherein he had climbed a mountain to transmit his emergency signal.
From Fox News’s chief national security correspondent:
Fox News can confirm that the 2nd crew member of the downed F15E fighter jet has been rescued and he and the members of the rescue team that extracted him from behind enemy lines in Iran are all safely out of Iran. That according to two senior US officials and multiple well placed sources in the region. The Weapons Systems Officer ejected along with the pilot when their F15E Strike Eagle they were flying was struck Thursday night (early Friday local time) in southwest Iran.
The WSO used the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training to evade capture, hiding on an elevated ridge after hiking away from the wreckage and putting out an emergency beacon.) US Special Operations rescue forces to include PJs (United States Air Force Pararescuemen (PJs) and many layers of elite rescue forces took part in the complex, layered mission to both find the crew member and also keep the Iranian forces who were hunting the American weapons system operator at bay. There are videos that have appeared from local eyewitnesses that show what appear to have been injured and dead Iranian members of the IRGC and Basij who were looking for the downed American crew member. Fox has learned there was fighting on the ground but no Americans killed during the operation. “It was a very complex operation to retrieve the downed service member,” a well placed source briefed on the operation told me. Many different branches of the US military were involved in the rescue.
Fox News can confirm the A10 Warthog that crashed Friday was involved in providing cover for the rescue teams searching for the pilot. That A10 crashed in Kuwait (first reported by ABC Friday) but the A10 pilot managed to eject safely and was rescued. There was destruction of aircraft which have sensitive equipment on board, I am told, all part of this complex CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) mission.
The F15E was pretty much destroyed on impact. Two rescue helicopters were hit by enemy fire on Friday and crew members onboard were injured by enemy fire but managed to make it out of Iran.
There were a lot of elements to this rescue, I am told.
The various US Special Forces teams, which included the Air Force’s Pararescue, allegedly engaged in gun battles against Iranian Basij militias in order to keep them under cover fire while the airman was extracted.
There are reports that the U.S. Air Force Pararescue teams are currently conducting an operation to extract the last remaining F-15 pilot inside Iranian territory.
HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters are reportedly active over Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, where heavy fighting is ongoing.
In the last hour, the IRGC’s ‘Saberin’ Unit and the “65th (NOHEN)” Airborne Special Forces engaged with US Pararescuemen and Special forces in the area.
The US allegedly flew in two HC-130 transport craft as well as several different types of helicopters and other craft (Dash-8s, MH-60s, Reaper drones, etc.).
The modernized C-295W of the US Air Force was spotted at an extremely low altitude in the sky over Iran.
The aircraft is in service with the specialized secret 427th Special Operations Squadron (427th SOS), which is part of the US Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC).
The official story claims the HC-130s got stuck in “mud” after landing, and had to be destroyed on the ground along with several helicopters, though this was later updated to a “mechanical failure” despite bullet holes being found on the wings and fuselage of the wreckage.
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But buckle up, because here’s where the story begins falling apart.
The original F-15E that was shot down was said to have gone down in ‘southwestern Iran’ with geolocations showing roughly 30.787710, 50.701440, which is about ~80km from the Iranian coastline:
You can see even major outlets reported the crash to have happened in southwestern Khuzestan province:
To the best of my ability I’ve traced the original geolocation to this post which shows US Pave Hawk Combat Search and Rescue choppers flying over the area presumed to be the original F-15E crash site.
But here’s the plot twist: the new footage of destroyed American C-130 transport craft and helicopters has been geolocated to over 200km away at this geolocation: 32.258394, 51.901927.
The above geolocation is just south of Isfahan, and as you can see, about 200km from the earlier CSAR geolocation:
A caveat: the CSAR geolocation appeared only to show a group of search craft passing through that location, it did not actually geolocate the downed F-15E wreckage itself. For all we know, those helicopters could have been passing from there toward the Isfahan site. But remember, even official MSM sources with contacts in government had initially reported the crash to be in precisely the area where the CSAR choppers were spotted and geolocated; so this does not rely on one piece of evidence alone.
Furthermore, it obviously makes more sense for an F-15E to have been operating around the coastal zone and not 300km deep in Isfahan, Iran, lobbing short-range bombs, which one would think would be the job of more stealthy craft.
However, a later geolocation did allegedly pin the F-15E crash to just south of Isfahan at 32°22’52.5”N 51°40’19.6”E:
The above photo used for the geolocation with the crater in it was from the original series of photos with F-15E debris seen here. This would put the distance between the two debris sites at about 25km:
The northwestern one is the F-15E crash site, and the southeastern one is the C-130 debris field. We’ll return to this in a moment.
Then there’s the fact that two C-130s were used to extract a single downed pilot—a plane meant to carry nearly 100 passengers. Does that strike anyone else as a little suspicious?
Granted, the official story claims a huge number of special forces were flown in:
BREAKING: The two MC-130 aircraft that ferried roughly 100 U.S. special operations forces into Iran to extract the final F-15 crew member, the WSO, suffered mechanical failures and were unable to take off, risking leaving commandos stranded behind enemy lines - Reuters
But if that’s the case, how did they get that same number out after both planes suffered “mechanical failures”?
But wait, there’s more.
The geolocated wreckage of the C-130s which were apparently using a local “agricultural airstrip” (32.223369, 51.897678) just happens to be right over a mountain, about 35km away, from Isfahan’s nuclear facility, where Iran’s ‘near-weapons grade’ enriched uranium is alleged to be stored:
In an article just last month, Rafael Grossi stated the following:
Almost half of Iran's uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons-grade, was stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan and is probably still there, U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday.
Listen closely below:
You can confirm via the above link in the quote that they are referring to the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center at the center of the discussion. There is apparently an underground complex at the connected “missile complex”, whose southern entrance is here: 32.585522° N, 51.814933° E.
This puts the failed US clandestine operation 35km southeast of one of Iran’s main uranium sites.
It is therefore only logical to speculate that the F-15E “rescue” operation was a fake meant to smokescreen and conceal something more nefarious. Recall that Trump had been talking about exfiltrating Iran’s uranium, an op that would require building runways in the country. It’s plausible that this plan had already long been underway as Trump bought time by claiming it was just a theoretical ‘possibility’ under consideration.
One of Iran’s Vice Presidents, Esmaeil Saghab Esfahani, gave a hint on his official account:
But if the F-15E did really crash near Isfahan, it raises many questions:
Why would an F-15E need to fly directly over Isfahan? Even if it was bombing the nuclear complex there with the shortest-range munitions possible, it would not need to come even remotely that close, particularly over a major population center that would likely have concentrated air defense.
It’s possible that the F-15s were being used to provide cover for the other clandestine operation and needed to be brought in extra close for diversionary reasons and direct CAS with Mavericks, laser-guided GBUs, etc., which have extremely short range and need direct line of sight from the aircraft to hit targets. For instance, reports openly state that US fighter jets did conduct active direct strikes on Iranian forces approaching the area of the CSAR op. That means we do know for definite jets were at least claimed to have been striking there—but we do not need to believe the official reason. They may very well have been striking to assist in the special forces’ true clandestine mission, whether it was uranium-related, or the beginnings of the FARP (Forward Arming and Refueling Point) base setup for future purposes.
There is also the new story that the CIA allegedly ran a diversionary psyop to make Iranians think that US was moving the recovered airman toward the coast in a convoy, while the real search and rescue operation took place deep inside the country:
US officials had earlier confirmed the mission to FOX News, explaining that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had conducted an extensive deception campaign as part of the rescue effort.
The CIA campaign involved spreading word inside Iran that US forces had already found him and were moving him overland for exfiltration, confusing Iranian forces and leadership in their own search for the missing airman.
While Iranian forces grappled with misinformation, US intelligence was able to aid in locating the airman in Iran and assist in a US special forces extraction mission.
Conclusion
We can make several speculative concluding points.
1. Boots-on-ground is already underway deep inside Iran, and just happens to be centered on the area where Iran stores its coveted uranium. There’s a very good chance Trump wanted to stage a surprise snatch-and-grab before announcing a major “victory” to the world.
2. Many have pointed out that this whole debacle does at least prove that Iran has been attrited to such a degree as to allow the US to now fly deep missions into central Iran, including with troops, which are able to get in and out without dying.
This may be true, but at the same time whatever this operation was, it appears to have been a massive failure with huge losses of materiel if not manpower, depending whether you believe official tales or not. We can assume if the US did lose men, we would see the bodies amidst the wreckage or elsewhere, and Iran would be enthusiastically displaying them. So it’s safe to assume US did not suffer much casualties, although that is not a definitive bet.
Iran is very mountainous and, as such, it is quite possible to fly smaller clandestine missions that avoid radar coverage because it is extremely difficult to have long-range radars operating in areas where mountains block the radar waves in every direction.
My personal bet as far as the above point: If any kind of special forces operation was to happen, it would only be done with the assistance of “insiders” as was done in Venezuela. If the Americans did manage to quickly ad hoc a FARP near Isfahan for the purposes of staging a grab-and-go, it would likely only be possible if bribed or blackmailed scientists and other turncoats were planning to assist the special forces units in entering the complexes, probably under disguise or some other ruse.
The operation yielded quite considerable losses:
Total from Operation Epic Failure so far:
The disaster appeared to send an unhinged, tilting Trump into an absolute paroxysm of witless rage:
Yes, that is a real post from the sitting President of the United States.
That’s on top of the fact reports claim US is now begging Iran for a 48-hour ceasefire, which Iran rejected. This likely had something to do with the “rescue operation”—a ploy to have Iran stop firing so US could save its troops.
Iranians have been recovering interesting items from the debris field including sunscreen for an ‘extended stay’ in enemy territory:
Iranian TV laughs at the failure:
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NYT again confirms our previous reporting by admitting that Iran is quickly repairing all its damaged missile bases
Get a load of this:
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.
In short, it’s precisely as we’ve been saying: US has no clue what they’ve actually taken out, they’re just guessing. Virtually everything they’re hitting are actually decoys.
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On top of that, also as we’ve been saying the US is running out of real targets because Iran has simply squirreled everything away and letting the US “go to town” on empty objects, civilian infrastructure, etc.
Iran’s actual airforce, ballistic missile force, etc., has hardly been touched. It’s all underground and bunkered up in the east of the country, with the IRGC dispersed all over and simply “waiting the US out” until key offensive munitions run out.
Remember this meme?
This is precisely why Trump has now shifted to hitting only civilian infrastructure, as per his deranged rant earlier. He has nothing left to hit that could possibly move the needle at all—he’s out of options.
Israel has likewise done the same for the same reasons. Militarily defeated, US-Israel can now only do what they do best: terrorize civilians in the hopes of turning Iran into a failed state like Cuba, or the countless others unfortunate enough to have been “liberated” by the Most Benevolent Empire.
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Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter say the profile of equipment and tactics matches a planned JSOC assault gone wrong, not a CSAR. Scott Ritter also suggests the target of the JSOC raid was uranium at Isfahan.
Can’t wait for Mark Wahlberg to star in a propaganda movie about this “heroic rescue”… 🤣