Tehran:The US and Iran are in a race against time to find the American pilot who went missing after the IRGC shot down an American warplane on Friday. Tehran is now asking people to help find him and even offering a reward. Iran said that two planes were attacked on Friday, one of which was a US F-15E Strike Eagle. One service member was saved, but at least one is still missing. It was the first confirmed loss of a US plane in Iran during the war, which is now in its sixth week. This could be a turning point in the campaign.
The White House and the Pentagon have not said anything official about the plane that went down.
The US and Israel started the conflict on February 28, and it has had effects all over the world and in the region. Thousands have died, global markets have been disrupted, important shipping routes have been affected, and fuel prices have gone up.
Just two days before the plane crash, President Donald Trump said in a speech to the nation that the US had "beaten and completely decimated Iran" and would "finish the job very fast." The US and Israel had also said not too long ago that Iran's air defenses were mostly gone.
Iran's frantic search for an American pilot in the USThe US military kept looking for the missing F-15E pilot and rescuing people. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran are also looking for a man in the southwest of the country. The governor of the region has also said that anyone who captures or kills what were called hostile enemy forces will get a reward and praise.
US officials didn't say much about what happened with the planes. The Pentagon confirmed to The Associated Press that it had received word of an aircraft being shot down in the Middle East, but did not give any more details.
One crew member was saved, but the condition of the other was still unknown.
Trump doesn't talk about the jets being shot down; instead, he talks to Iran.President Trump told NBC News that he would not comment on the rescue efforts, but he did say that the incident would not affect talks with Iran.
Iranian state media also said that Iranian forces shot down a US A-10 plane in the Persian Gulf. But a US official said it was not clear if the plane had crashed or been shot down, or if Iran was directly involved. It was still unclear what the crew was like and where they were.
An anchor on Iranian state TV told people to tell the police if they saw a "enemy pilot" who had been captured. Iran has made a number of claims during the war that they shot down enemy planes, but these claims have not been proven. This was the first time the public was asked to help find a pilot.
Another nuclear site in Iran was hit.On Saturday, an airstrike hit near the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran, killing a security guard and damaging a support building, according to the country's atomic agency. The agency said on social media that this was the fourth strike on the site during the war.
Iran kept firing missiles and drones at US and Israeli targets on Saturday, showing no signs of stopping the fighting. A drone that looked like it came from Iran also damaged the Dubai office of the US tech company Oracle.