Amid an intense search-and-rescue effort to locate the second crew member of an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet that crashed in Iran, President Donald Trump said Saturday in a social media post that Iran’s military leaders “are terminated”.
In the Truth Social post, the president included a video that appeared to show strikes and bombs going off against the background of a darkened sky.
On Friday, the F‑15E fighter went down over Iran, prompting a U.S. rescue mission that quickly recovered one crew member. But another from the fighter aircraft remained missing as of late Friday.
Separately, an A-10 “Warthog” plane that was part of the search-and-rescue mission was fired on by Iranian forces. The Warthog pilot ejected over the Persian Gulf but was rescued, according to the New York Times and CBS News.
The fate of the missing crew member from the F-15E Eagle is unknown and has prompted an intense search amid the fifth week of the U.S.–Israel war with Iran. Trump has threatened more strikes on Iran as he continues to pressure Tehran to make a deal to end the war.
In a brief call with the British news outlet The Independent, Trump said he’s not ready to comment on what the U.S. would do if the missing crew member was harmed.
“Well, I can’t comment on it because – we hope that’s not going to happen,” Trump said.
On Saturday, the State Department announced that the niece and grand-niece of assassinated Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani had their green cards revoked.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the lawful permanent resident statuses for Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, the department said in a news release.
Jonathan Limehouse
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, President Donald Trump commented on the state of the war in the Middle East, saying, “Many of Iran’s Military Leaders, who have led them poorly and unwisely, are terminated, along with much else, with this massive strike in Tehran!”
Included in Trump’s post was a video that appeared to show attacks in Tehran, the capital and largest city of Iran. The 1-minute clip shows multiple bombs going off at night.
Trump did not say when the bombing in the video occurred, but he previously threatened more strikes on Iran as he puts pressure on Iran to make a deal to end the war that began in Feb. 28.
Eduardo Cuevas
The niece and grand-niece of assassinated Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani had their green cards revoked, the U.S. State Department announced April 4.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the lawful permanent resident statuses for Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, the State Department said in a news release. The two are now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody pending removal from the United States, the State Department said. In 2020, President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq.
The State Department said Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were “living lavishly” in Los Angeles while Soleimani Afshar promoted Iranian government propaganda. She is accused of celebrating attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the United States, which she called the “Great Satan,” as well as praising the new Iranian leader and voicing support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization by the State Department. The State Department said she frequently posted on a recently deleted Instagram account.
“The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes,” Rubio said in an X post.
In an X post, Department of Homeland Security said ICE officers on April 3 arrested Soleimani Afshar and her daughter in Los Angeles.
Soleimani Afshar entered the country in June 2015 on a tourist visa, DHS said, and an immigration judge granted her asylum in 2019. She became a green card holder in 2021, according to DHS. In July 2025, she applied to become a naturalized citizen.
Zachary Schermele
The online prediction market platform Polymarket apologized April 3 for allowing users to place bets on the fates of the pilots after news broke of their downed jet.
In response to a frustrated social media post from a Democratic congressman, the company replied that the market was taken down immediately because it did not meet “integrity standards.”
“It should not have been posted, and we are investigating how this slipped through our internal safeguards,” Polymarket wrote.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Massachusetts, a Marine Corps veteran, condemned the incident.
“They could be your neighbor, a friend, a family member. And people are betting on whether or not they’ll be saved,” he wrote on X. “This is DISGUSTING.”
Zachary Schermele
A new ultimatum from a Utah Republican may preview bigger issues on Capitol Hill over Iran for the White House as it seeks more war cash.
Sen. John Curtis said in an April 1 op-ed in the Deseret News that he won’t support funding for military action past 60 days in Iran without congressional approval.
“Here in America, constitutional limits are in place to temper the president from unilateral authority,” he wrote. He stressed that he remains supportive of “maintaining our readiness and replenishing stockpiles.”
The assertion could complicate an impending effort in Congress to pass as much as $350 billion in supplemental defense spending on a party-line vote. While only a simple majority in the Senate will be needed to pass the budget bill, which will also include money for domestic immigration enforcement, Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes.
Zachary Schermele
In a social media post Saturday morning, President Trump said “time is running out” for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the key global oil passageway that has become arguably the Iranians’ biggest point of leverage in the war.
“48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” he wrote on his platform Truth Social.
Zachary Schermele
More than 1,600 civilians in Iran have been killed in the war as of April 3, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a press association established in 2009 by Iranian human rights advocates.
That figure includes at least 244 children,the group estimates, and 1,213 military fatalities.
According to the latest Pentagon data, 365 American service members have been wounded, and 13 have been killed.
Zachary Schermele
State media in Iran offered its citizens a reward for finding the missing F-15E pilot. According to the semiofficial Iranian news agency ISNA, an Iranian official said locals “would be specially commended” for locating the American.
Zachary Schermele
President Trump told NBC News that uproar over the downed fighter jet won’t affect negotiations to end the war in Iran, which he vowed just days ago to draw to a close soon (while at the same time also promising to escalate attacks in the coming weeks).
“No, it’s war,” he said. “We’re in war.”