President Donald Trump held a news conference Monday at the White House after announcing the rescue of a second crew member over the weekend from a downed F-15 fighter jet in Iran. Trump provided intricate details of what he said was a “very historic” rescue. Trump explained that the airm an, a colonel, had landed in Iran a “significant distance away from the pilot” who had been rescued on Friday. Speaking about the second airman, Trump said, “He was injured quite badly and stranded in an area teeming with terrorists from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — rough group — as well as besieged military, militia and local authorities.” Trump said Iranians were “given a tremendous incentive to find this pilot.” “Despite the peril, the officer followed his training and climbed into the treacherous mountain terrain and started climbing toward a higher altitude, something they were trained to do in order to evade capture,” he said. Trump said the airman scaled cliffs and was “bleeding rather profusely,” and treated his own wounds. The airman, he continued, “contacted American forces to transmit his location” using what Trump said is a “very sophisticated beeper-type apparatus” that he said “saved his life.” “We immediately mobilized a massive operation to retrieve him from the mountain hold-out,” Trump said. He said the rescue operation involved 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers and 13 rescue aircraft. “The heroic F-15 weapons system officer had evaded capture on the ground in Iran for almost 48 hours,” he said. “In a breathtaking show of skill and precision, lethality and force, America’s military descended on the area,” Trump said, saying that the U.S. “engaged the enemy” and “rescued the stranded officer, destroyed all threats and exited Iranian territory while taking no casualties of any kind.” Trump said that eventually there was a problem leaving Iran because of the “wet sand” and the “weight of the plane.” “Then we also had all the men jumping back onto the planes, and they got pretty well bogged down. And we had a continued contingency plan which was unbelievable,” he said. Trump said that “lighter, faster aircraft” flew in to take the Americans out of Iran with the airman. The U.S. destroyed the aircraft that were stuck in the sand, he said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out details about the timing of the two rescue missions. The first mission was “audacious daylight, thunder run right up the middle,” Hegseth said, adding that the mission was authorized less than two hours after the military determined where the first service member was located. Hegseth said a coordination call was held open for nearly 46 hours between the F-15 fighter jet crashing and the second service member being rescued. “From the moment our pilots went down, our mission was unblinking,” he said. “The call never dropped. The meeting never stopped. The planning never ceased.”  War with Iran 21 hours ago Trump issues fiery new threat against Iran as details of U.S. aviator's rescue emerge War with Iran Apr 5 U.S. aviator missing after Iran shot down fighter jet has been rescued The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, said that U.S. service members took on substantial enemy fire during the rescue. Caine said that the search-and-rescue task force came “under fire” en route to rescuing the pilot last week. He said that remotely piloted aircraft, drones and other tactical aircraft “were violently suppressing and engaging the enemy in a close in gun fight to keep them away from the front-seater and allow the pick-up force to get into the objective area.” Caine explained that one of the pilots in the rescue operation “was hit by enemy fire.” “This pilot continued to fight, continued the mission, and then upon exit, flew his aircraft into another country and determined that the airplane was not landable,” Caine said. “This was one of our A-10 Sandy aircraft. The pilot then made the decision to eject over friendly territory, and was quickly and safely recovered and is doing fine.” He also added, “the trailing aircraft, took several hits. The crew sustained minor injury, and they are going to be fine.” CIA director details agency’s role CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that the CIA deployed “both human assets and exquisite technologies” to find the second U.S. service member rescued in Iran, which he likened to “hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.” Ratcliffe confirmed that the CIA embarked in a deception campaign to confuse Iranians who were looking for the service member. Earlier in his remarks, he also emphasized the “the unique tradition of the U.S. armed forces that we leave no man or woman behind.” “This was a no fail mission,” he said. “That was the spirit in which the president put us to work, and we were determined not to let him down, or our airman down.” Later, Ratcliffe praised the president’s work. “I know that the confidence of CIA’s officers is boosted by the knowledge that their work is informing a president who’s not afraid to make the hardest decisions when the stakes are highest,” he said. Trump has repeatedly emphasized that rescue operations are highly risky to the military service members involved in the missions and are often not undertaken for that reason, but that he did not hesitate to give the go-ahead to find the missing airman. Trump’s deadline to reopen Strait of Hormuz looms In his comments to reporters, Trump repeated his threat to destroy Iran’s bridges, power plants and civilian infrastructure by midnight tomorrow, bombing the country back into “the stone ages.” “We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business — burning, exploding, and never to be used again,” he said. He added, “I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours.” He has given tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET as the deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a major shipping route for oil, or suffer the widespread destruction of its infrastructure. It comes as Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran rejected the latest ceasefire proposal and wants a permanent end to the war. The agency said it has conveyed its response to the U.S. through Pakistan, a key mediator. “We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press on Monday. Trump responded with a new harsh warning to Iran. “They just don’t want to say ‘uncle,'” Trump told reporters as he and first lady Melania Trump hosted the White House Easter Egg Roll. “They don’t want to cry as the expression goes ‘uncle,’ but they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges. They’ll have no power plants. They’ll have no anything.” He added another ominous warning, “I won’t go further because there are other things that are worse than those two.” Iran has warned of a “more severe and expansive” response if Trump follows through on his expletive-laden threat to strike energy infrastructure and bridges. A reporter asked Trump at Monday’s news conference whether threatening to hit Iran’s infrastructure and cut off their power would punish the people for the actions of the regime. “They would be willing to suffer that for their freedom,” Trump said, and that Iranians want the U.S. strikes to continue and that Iranians “want freedom.” “They have lived in a world that you know nothing about,” he added. “It’s a violent, horrible world, where if you protest, you are shot.” Meanwhile, Israel and the United States carried out a wave of attacks on Iran, killing more than 25 people. Iran responded with missile fire on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors. Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement Monday that “assassination and crime” won’t disrupt the Iranian armed forces as they fight against the U.S. and Israel. Expressing condolences to the family of Iranian Intelligence Chief Seyyed Majid Khademi, who was killed in an overnight attack, Khamenei said these incidents won’t deter the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Mojtaba Khamenei has stayed out of the pubic eye since the assassination of his father, Ali Khamenei, and other family members at the start of the war. He was named as his father’s replacement after his father’s death. Attacks on Israel have intensified recently, with Yemen’s Houthis targeting the south of the country and announcing their participation alongside Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. There have been more strikes and attempted strikes on central and northern Israel, causing a lot of damage to the areas. The north especially has been impacted by what has been described by locals as non-stop barrages, especially since Hezbollah joined the war. There has been growing public discourse and criticism in Israel surrounding a lack of media coverage when the north is attacked as opposed to central Israel. Trump threatens journalist over identity of leaker In his speech Monday Trump said that someone leaked information about the rescue of the first service member before the second one had been brought to safety, adding, “we’re looking very hard to find that leaker.” Trump said Iran did not know that a second service member was missing until the leaker shared information. “All of a sudden, they know that there’s somebody out there,” he said of the Iranians. “They see all these planes coming in. It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked that we have one, we’ve rescued one, but there’s another one out there that we’re trying to get. “So actually, the country Iran, put out a major notice — you all saw it — offering a very big award for anybody that captures the pilot,” Trump said. “So in addition to a hostile, very talented, very good, very evil military, we had millions of people trying to get an award, so when you add that to it, but we have to find that leaker, because that’s a sick person.” “We think we’ll be able to find it out,” Trump said of the leaker’s identity. “Because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail.'” Trump did not specify which media company he was referring to. Any attempt to jail reporters over not giving up the identities of sources would almost certainly face immediate legal pushback. ...read more read less