President Donald Trump reportedly stated the shooting down of a United States F-15E over Iran on Friday morning would not affect ongoing negotiations, pointing out, “It’s war.”
Garrett Haake, a Senior White House Correspondent for NBC News, shared in a post on X that Trump “declined to discuss any details of the ongoing, intensive search” for the pilot.
“I just spoke briefly with President Trump,” Haake wrote. “He declined to discuss any details of the ongoing, intensive search for the missing pilot in Iran. I asked if today’s events would affect negotiations with Iran: ‘No, not at all. No, it’s war. We’re in war, Garrett.’”
Breitbart News’s Oliver JJ Lane reported that American officials told CBS News that “one crew member” had been found, and “the search and rescue mission to recover the second crew member is ongoing”:
One crew member from that downed F-15 has been recovered by U.S. forces, broadcaster CBS News claimed it was told by “U.S. Officials”.
The search and rescue mission to recover the second crew member is ongoing. The BBC says White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told them, “The President had been briefed.”
Other than that it’s still very unclear what happened and how: Leavitt’s reported remark is the first time a named U.S. official has acknowledged anything has happened at all.
“Three Iranian officials” reportedly told the New York Times that Iranian officials are “also searching for the missing American,” and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “closed off an area in southwestern Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, where they believe the flyer went down.”
