The crew member of the downed US F-15 had been rescued from "deep inside the mountains of Iran" and is "seriously wounded," US President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday.

"WE GOT HIM!" Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after midnight. "The US Military sent dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World, to retrieve him. He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine," he wrote.

The aircraft had been downed earlier Friday in southern Iran, causing two crew members – the pilot and the weapons systems officer – to eject. The pilot was rescued soon after, but the second crew, whom Trump described as a "highly respected Colonel," spent more than 24 hours evading capture in the mountainous region.

"This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour," said Trump.

Iran, by contrast, said the US mission had failed and claimed several US aircraft had been shot down.

Frantic search behind enemy lines

Dozens of special forces, as well as US warplanes and helicopters, were involved in the rescue plan, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Hundreds of US special forces troops and other military personnel also took part in the mission, which involved clashes with Iranian forces.

According to US officials briefing multiple media outlets, the officer relied on mandatory survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) training to avoid capture for about a day and a half.

After ejecting, the officer, armed only with a pistol, climbed to a 7,000-foot mountain ridgeline and concealed himself in a crevice. In the meantime, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) conducted intensive searches near the crash site.

Iranian officials publicly appealed to local residents to locate the missing crew member, offering a bounty of £50,000 ($66,100). Online videos showed local people forming search parties near the crash site.

While evading Iranian search teams, the officer activated an emergency beacon, allowing US forces to pinpoint his location, according to US officials. But his communication was sporadic as he worked to avoid being detected by Iranian forces.

CIA's role

The CIA played a central role, launching a deception operation to mislead Iranian forces, Axios reported. The agency spread false information inside Iran claiming both crew members from the downed F‑15E had already been located and that US forces were proceeding with extraction, in an effort to confuse Iranian troops seeking to capture the downed officer.

The CIA also reportedly carried out an "unconventional assisted recovery," reaching out to civilians willing to assist or shelter US military personnel, according to Axios.

As US special operations forces converged on the mountainside where the officer had been hiding, US planes conducted strikes in the area to ensure Iranian forces were not able to get there first. Trump was watching along from the Situation Room.

It was the CIA that ultimately identified the officer's exact location and passed the information along to the Pentagon.

Trump said his location was monitored "24 hours a day" by US officials who were planning the rescue operation, adding that the officer was "being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour."

Once located, the officer was escorted to two nearby MC-130J transport aircraft waiting to extract him from Iran. As US special forces made their way towards the stranded officer, bombs and weapons fire were used to keep Iranian troops away from his location.

However, the two transport planes suffered mechanical failures. The US later sent three replacement planes and destroyed the two disabled aircraft to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands.

After the officer was rescued, he was flown to Kuwait to receive treatment for his injuries.

Iran: US rescue operation ended in complete failure

Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for Iran's main military command, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said the US so-called rescue operation, "which had been planned as a deception and escape operation under the pretext of rescuing the pilot of its downed plane at an abandoned airport south of Isfahan," ended in complete failure with the Iranian armed forces' timely presence.

He noted that Trump "is trying to justify his army's bitter defeat and failure by creating confusion for public opinion."