{"id":206505,"date":"2026-04-04T22:14:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-said-iran-was-decimated-then-an-american-f-15e-fighter-jet-was-shot-down-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T22:14:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:14:28","slug":"trump-said-iran-was-decimated-then-an-american-f-15e-fighter-jet-was-shot-down-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-said-iran-was-decimated-then-an-american-f-15e-fighter-jet-was-shot-down-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump said Iran was 'decimated.' Then an American F-15E fighter jet was shot down. – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON \u2014 Less than 48 hours after President Donald Trump told Americans the U.S. military had \u201cbeaten and completely decimated Iran,\u201d Tehran shot down an F-15E fighter jet<\/a>, setting off a high-risk scramble by U.S. forces to rescue two service members from deep inside Iranian territory. Iran also struck two Blackhawk helicopters and an attack jet that were assisting in the search and rescue effort.
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The harrowing incidents have put in stark relief a growing challenge facing the president as the war enters its second month: Despite a daily bombing campaign and his triumphant wartime narrative, Iran retains enough military capabilities to inflict considerable damage to U.S. service members and America\u2019s allies and assets in the Middle East.
\u201cThey have no anti-aircraft equipment,\u201d Trump said of Iran in his address this week.<\/a> \u201cTheir radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.\u201d
Roughly half of Iran\u2019s ballistic missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in its arsenal, according to a U.S. official and a person briefed on the matter. Multiple missile stockpiles buried underground in Iran also remain undamaged, the sources said. And, they said, Iran still can launch missiles at ships transiting waterways across the region.
\u201cEven at the rates at which they\u2019re firing things now, they\u2019re going to be able to sustain it for awhile,\u201d Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the foreign affairs think tank Stimson Center, said of the Iranians. She said Iran also is getting better at hiding the weaponry it has.
Iran\u2019s attack on the F-15E on Friday was the first time in decades <\/a>that a U.S. fighter jet had been downed by enemy fire. One of the service members was rescued, while the U.S. military searched for the other. There were minor injuries to U.S. forces on the Blackhawk helicopter, and the pilot of the attack aircraft, an A-10 Thunderbolt, safely ejected over Kuwaiti airspace, according to a U.S. official.
But the developments marked a potential turning point in the war for Americans, as the White House\u2019s account of how the war is going \u2014 emphasizing the U.S. military successes and downplaying the threat Iran still poses \u2014 is in conflict with its grim realities. A senior White House official said Trump gathered his national security team at the White House on Friday evening to monitor the ongoing events.
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this week, the White House had assured Americans that Iran no longer controlled the airspace over its country. \u201cU.S. and Israeli joint forces control the skies and have asserted air dominance over Iran,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
Yet since Trump\u2019s prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday \u2014 where he extolled the \u201cswift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield\u201d \u2014 Iran has launched at least 50 ballistic missiles and more than 150 drones targeting the U.S. and its allies across the Middle East, according to a tally compiled by NBC News.
At least 16 U.S. Reaper drones have been downed since the start of the war, including two this week, the U.S. official said.
Trump has also argued the Iranian regime has been killed off and a more sympathetic one that\u2019s holding diplomatic talks with his administration to end the war is in power. The president has sent mixed signals about how and when the conflict may end, while gas prices continue to rise because of Tehran\u2019s ability to choke off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz <\/a>with its drone and other low-cost weapons. Trump told NBC News on Friday that talks with Iran would not be affected by the downing of the F-15E.
Iran, though, says there are no direct talks.<\/a> And the U.S. has no indication that Iran\u2019s authoritarian government has lost its grip on power or that successors to assassinated leaders have made a break with the Islamic Republic\u2019s hard-line<\/a> anti-Israel, anti-U.S. stance, according to multiple Western officials, U.S. intelligence assessments and regional analysts. The Iranians who have replaced senior leaders are known as equally hard-line or arguably even more militant than their predecessors, the sources say.
It has been difficult to independently quantify the status of the war, including the level of U.S. military success, in part because there is little public information made available by the Trump administration. The U.S. has released generalized data and videos about targets or missiles launched<\/a>, and no independent news media is embedded with American forces as has been the case in past conflicts.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said the U.S. has superiority of the airspace over parts of western and southern Iran, but not yet to the east. Grieco, the fellow at the Stimson Center, said the U.S. does not have superiority in the east, and Iran has seized on its ability to inflict harm on the U.S. and prolong the conflict through asymmetric warfare, including with drones, hidden missile launchers, sea mines and small attack boats used in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranians \u201cstill have capability and capacity, and the real question for me is, what\u2019s the potential for what they can do with that capability and capacity that they do have?\u201d she said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is asymmetric warfare playing out in the air and maritime space.\u201d
Iranian media on Friday published photos alongside claims from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it had shot down the F-15E. Iran\u2019s parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf later trolled Trump in a post on X.
\u201cAfter defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from \u2018regime change\u2019 to \u2018Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?\u2019 Wow. What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.\u201d One service member remains missing.
Trump is finding the U.S. is increasingly isolated, as allies stand by and refuse to engage in a war they were not consulted about joining before it was underway.
Trump ramped up his attacks on European allies this week, deriding NATO members\u2019 refusal to show \u201ccourage\u201d and lead in clearing the Straight of Hormuz. He\u2019s also angry that the United Kingdom, France and Spain have not allowed the U.S. unfettered access to their airspace and military bases for attacks on Iran. NATO\u2019s secretary-general was heading to the White House next week.<\/a>
Dan De Luce\u00a0is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.\u00a0
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Gordon Lubold is a national security reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWASHINGTON \u2014 Less than 48 hours after President Donald Trump told Americans the U.S. military had \u201cbeaten and completely decimated Iran,\u201d Tehran shot down an F-15E fighter jet, setting off a high-risk scramble by U.S. forces to rescue two service members from deep inside Iranian territory. Iran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}