TEHRAN – Amid rapidly escalating military tensions between Iran, the United States, and Israel, Iran’s top unified military command Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters announced Sunday that it has destroyed four U.S. military aircraft in the country’s central airspace during a purported American rescue mission.
According to Iranian state news agency IRNA, spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari confirmed that the destroyed assets include two U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules transport planes and two Black Hawk utility helicopters. The aircraft were intercepted and taken out during a coordinated joint operation conducted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), regular army, voluntary Basij militia, and national law enforcement forces operating south of Isfahan province in central Iran, Zolfaghari added.
The Iranian military spokesperson framed the U.S. incursion as a covert deceptive operation disguised as a pilot rescue mission. Zolfaghari explained that the U.S. action was launched under the false pretense of retrieving a pilot from a previously downed American aircraft at an abandoned airfield south of Isfahan, and that the operation ended in total defeat thanks to the rapid, coordinated response of Iranian armed forces.
He further accused sitting U.S. President Donald Trump of deliberately spreading misinformation to confuse global public opinion in an attempt to downplay and justify what he called the U.S. military’s “bitter defeat.”
The latest exchange of claims comes two days after the IRGC announced it had shot down an American F-35 stealth fighter jet in central Iranian airspace, adding at the time that the fate of the jet’s crew remained unconfirmed. Shortly after that announcement, U.S. officials stated that one pilot from the downed aircraft had already been recovered, with search operations ongoing for the second.
On Sunday morning, President Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to issue a counterclaim, hailing what he called “one of the most daring search and rescue operations in U.S. history.” He added that the second downed pilot had been successfully rescued and was unharmed.
This new escalation comes just over a month after a major regional attack that upended Middle East security. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a joint airstrike campaign targeting Tehran and multiple other Iranian urban centers, which killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei alongside multiple senior military commanders and civilian bystanders. In response, Iran launched a massive retaliatory campaign of missile and drone strikes targeting Israeli territory as well as U.S. military bases and assets positioned across the Middle East, pushing the region to the brink of full-scale open war.