00:09On April 3rd, 2026, an American F-15E Strike Eagle from the 494th Fighter Squadron got hit
00:19by an Iranian surface-to-air missile somewhere over Isfahan Province. The jet was flying a
00:25combat mission as part of Operation Epic Fury, a campaign that had already been running for over
00:31five weeks. Both crew members ejected. The pilot landed in relatively open terrain and was picked
00:39up within hours by U.S. helicopters. But the weapon systems officer, a colonel, wasn't so lucky. He
00:48came down miles away in the Zagros Mountains, surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard
00:54soldiers who were already converging on the crash site. And for the next 36 hours, he was completely
01:01alone, injured, armed with nothing but a pistol and a radio, while hundreds of enemy troops and local
01:09civilians hunted him for a $60,000 bounty. So how did the U.S. military get him out? To understand
01:18what
01:18made this rescue so difficult, you need to picture the terrain.
01:32The Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran. Broken, rocky ground. Limited visibility. 7,000-foot ridge
01:42lines. And the colonel had a sprained ankle from the ejection, which compresses the spine and rattles
01:48every joint in your body. Some people can't walk after it. He walked anyway. True to his SERE training,
01:57survival, evasion, resistance, and escape, he did everything right. He moved away from the crash site,
02:05away from the wreckage that would draw search parties. He climbed uphill, staying off roads
02:12and trails, breaking line of sight with the terrain. He found a crevice in the rock near the top of
02:18a
02:18ridge line, crawled inside, and made himself as small as possible. His beacon transmissions were
02:25intermittent. His radio calls were short. One of them was just three words,
02:31God is good. That message actually caused a brief panic back in Washington because officials worried
02:39it might be a signal sent under Iranian coercion that maybe he'd already been captured and this was a
02:46trap. But he hadn't been captured. He was still out there, bleeding, freezing, waiting. Meanwhile,
02:56the Iranians were throwing everything they had at finding him.
03:10The Revolutionary Guard deployed hundreds of soldiers to sweep the area. State television broadcast his
03:17approximate location and urged civilians to help find him. Local merchants pooled together the equivalent of
03:24$60,000 as a reward. Videos posted online showed villagers and nomadic tribesmen forming search parties,
03:33heading into the mountains after dark. The race was on, and the Americans were losing it.
03:39US surveillance drones couldn't find him. His beacon was intermittent. For a stretch of time,
03:45his status was listed as simply unknown. That's when the CIA stepped in.
03:52The agency launched a deception campaign inside Iran, spreading false reports that both crew members
03:59had already been recovered and were being moved overland toward exfiltration. The goal was to create
04:06confusion, to make the Iranians unsure whether the man they were hunting was even still in the mountains.
04:12While Iranian forces chased ghosts, CIA operatives used what officials later called unique, exquisite
04:22capabilities to locate one heat signature surrounded by rock high on a ridge line, a man in a crevice, alive.
04:43The agency passed the coordinates to the Pentagon and the White House. The president ordered an immediate
04:49rescue. If you want to understand the scale of what happened next, consider this. The US established a
04:56temporary forward operating base inside Iran using an abandoned agricultural airstrip about 14 miles north
05:04of Shereza city, right in the middle of some of Iran's most heavily defended territory. The Natanz nuclear
05:12facility was nearby. IRGC missile installations dotted the region, and the Americans set up shop anyway.
05:21We dig into stories like this every week. If that sounds good, subscribe.
05:36Under cover of darkness, roughly 100 special operations forces, including Navy SEAL Team 6 and Air Force
05:45Special Warfare units moved into the mountains. They scaled the 7,000-foot ridge. US attack aircraft dropped bombs on
05:55Iranian convoys that tried to approach the area. Israeli intelligence provided real-time support, and the
06:03Israeli Air Force reportedly carried out at least one strike to block Iranian forces from reaching the colonel's position.
06:11The commandos reached the crevice. They pulled him out. He was injured but alive. Then the plan started falling apart.
06:20Two MC-13OJ transport aircraft that had ferried the special operators into Iran suffered mechanical
06:28failures on the makeshift airstrip. They couldn't take off. The commandos now had the rescued colonel,
06:35but no ride home, deep inside enemy territory, with Iranian forces closing in.
06:43Two Black Hawk helicopters took fire and were damaged. An A-10 Thunderbolt that had been providing air
06:50support during the search was hit by ground fire and limped to Kuwaiti airspace before the pilot had to eject.
07:00The military made a hard call. They couldn't leave those broken aircraft behind for the Iranians to capture and exploit.
07:08So they destroyed the two C-130s and several special operations helicopters on the ground, blew up their
07:16own planes to keep them out of enemy hands. Three additional aircraft were scrambled to extract the team.
07:22The commandos, the colonel, everyone flew out of Iran before dawn. Not a single American was killed during
07:30the entire operation. The Iranians lost several soldiers and at least one Brigadier General who was
07:37killed by a U.S. airstrike near Isfahan after his unit fired a shoulder-launched missile at one of the
07:44rescue aircraft.
07:56Think about what that took. Over 150 aircraft, hundreds of special operators, a CIA deception campaign,
08:06a temporary base built inside enemy territory, bombed out convoys, destroyed transport planes,
08:14a nighttime extraction from a mountain crevice in the Zagros range, while hundreds of enemy fighters
08:21closed in from every direction. Military analysts have called it one of the most complex combat search
08:28and rescue operations in American history. And the whole thing hinged on one man doing exactly what his
08:34training taught him. Move away from the crash. Go high. Find cover. Stay small. Keep your transmission
08:42short. Trust that someone is coming for you. He sat in that crevice for a day and a half with
08:48a pistol and
08:48a radio. And someone came. There's another one on screen if you're not done yet.
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