Hi all, Ben here. It’s Saturday afternoon. Here are the latest updates.
The White House called a travel and photo lid at 11am ET today, meaning we don’t expect to see the president for the rest of the day. Trump is in uncharacteristically Washington this weekend, but there has been no formal news briefing on the situation with the missing airman in Iran. And CENTCOM has gone more than 24 hours without posting anything publicly. That silence is deafening.
Here’s what we’re tracking today:
A U.S. airman is still missing in Iran following the downing of an F-15E Strike Eagle, and CENTCOM has gone silent for over 24 hours
The U.S. has suffered staggering aircraft losses across the region — drones, fighter jets, tankers, helicopters
U.S. federal agents arrested the niece and grand-niece of Qassem Soleimani this morning after Rubio revoked their green cards. The timing raises serious questions
Trump posted a 48-hour ultimatum threatening to “rain hell” on Iran, signed off with “Glory be to God”
Iran is preparing to unveil new air defense systems on the battlefield
U.S. and Israeli strikes hit five Iranian petrochemical plants and the Bushehr nuclear facility again
Lindsey Graham checked in to remind everyone he exists and he loves war
European countries are quietly pursuing their own diplomacy with Tehran. Without the United States.
Trump compared himself to Jesus on Palm Sunday and called himself a king
Let’s get into all of it.
Two U.S. aircraft were downed in Iran yesterday, and one airman remains missing. Here’s what we know about the incidents from the past 24 hours.
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle was hit by Iranian fire and crashed in Iran. Both crew members reportedly survived. One has been rescued, and a large combat search and rescue operation is ongoing for the second. A U.S. Air Force HH-60W “Jolly Green II” helicopter, which was conducting rescue operations for the downed F-15 crew, took small arms fire with at least one crew member injured, though it made it back to base. The pilot of a U.S. Air Force A-10C Thunderbolt II ejected over the Persian Gulf. Iran claims responsibility for shooting it down, and that pilot was recovered safely. Additionally, a U.S. Air Force F-16C briefly appeared on flight tracking sites squawking 7700, the emergency code, over Iraq, and a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker was squawking 7700 over Israel.
We’re remaining very focused on the connection between that missing airman and something that happened this morning: U.S. federal agents arrested the niece and grand-niece of the late Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their lawful permanent resident status. “Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the State Department confirmed. I don’t want to over-speculate here, but I’ll just say this: the timing is notable, the lid was called, the press has been locked out, and there’s a missing American pilot. Draw your own conclusions. We’re paying attention. And we will bring you the updates when we confirm what is truly going on.
Let’s just be clear about what the losses look like at this point. One F-35 damaged. Four F-15E Strike Eagles lost in total. One A-10 Thunderbolt II shot down. One E-3G Sentry AWACS, the crown jewel of U.S. airborne surveillance, destroyed. Eight KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft either destroyed, crashed, or damaged, several of them unusable. Seventeen MQ-9 Reaper drones shot down. One UH-60 Black Hawk damaged. Two HH-60G Pave Hawks damaged. One CH-47 Chinook destroyed. And 13 American military bases in the region have been evacuated.
Israeli forces struck a major Iranian petrochemical complex in southwest Iran this morning, with at least five plants in the Mahshahr area targeted. The IDF confirmed it bombed Iranian industrial targets. One security personnel at the Bushehr nuclear facility has been killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike. Iran’s Minister of Science stated that 30 universities have now been targeted. New footage also emerged of the bombing of the Karaj Bridge by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. Watch that footage in my video report. Just watch it. These are civilian bridges, universities, elementary schools. That’s what this war looks like on the ground. We can’t let ourselves be numbed to these images.
The Iranian Foreign Minister has also pointed out that while there was enormous Western outrage over threats to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the Bushehr plant has now been bombed four times, and he’s warning that radioactive fallout could reach Gulf Cooperation Council capitals.
Meanwhile, according to Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency, a spokesman for the IRGC says Iran is preparing to unveil new air defense systems on the battlefield against Israel and the United States. This comes one day after Iran successfully downed the F-15E and A-10C. It’s a far cry from Trump’s recent claims that Iran has no air defense capabilities.
While not speaking to the press, here’s what the president of the United States decided to contribute today on social media.
He posted: “Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign [sic] down on them. Glory be to GOD!”
Glory be to God. He’s certainly not beating the accusations that this is a religious war with that rheotic. You’ve got an airman missing in Iran, planes being shot out of the sky, bases being evacuated and this man is typing capital letters about raining (well, “reigning”) hell while invoking God.
And let’s be for real… Nobody’s scared of the deadline, because nobody believes it. He did ten days, then extended it. He’s done five days. He’s done 48 hours before. He announces deals that don’t exist. His credibility, which didn’t exist in the first place, is completely nonexistent.
He also found time this morning to attack NATO again, taking shots at the New York Times for mistakenly calling it the “North American Treaty Organization” instead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while simultaneously describing NATO as “our severely weakened and extremely unreliable partner.” We are in the middle of the most catastrophic U.S. military engagement in modern history, a pilot is missing, and Trump is worked up about typos in the New York Times, which I bet he didn’t even know was a typo until somebody told him.
Senator Lindsey Graham posted this morning that he had “a great conversation” with the president and fully supports the ultimatum. He warned Iran that “a massive military operation awaits” if they “choose poorly,” and insisted that Trump “means what he says.”
The objective, you’ll notice, has shifted. It used to be regime change. It used to be dismantling Iran’s military capabilities entirely. Now it’s... please open the Strait of Hormuz. A problem that did not even exist prior to Trump’s war.
An Israeli security analyst and top Iranian affairs expert, someone whose assessments have been consistently accurate throughout this conflict, put it plainly this morning: this approach won’t work. Iran will not surrender. The administration fundamentally does not understand what drives the Islamic Republic. When pressed, Iran escalates.
Austria’s Foreign Minister spoke with Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi today and called for diplomatic solutions and urgent de-escalation. She’s just the latest in a growing list of European countries quietly working their own back channels with Tehran — France, Japan, now Austria. The notable absence, as some analysts are pointing out, is Germany, the continent’s largest economy, which has the most to lose economically and seems oddly sidelined.
Iran’s own power structure is publicly trolling the United States. Saeed Jalili, a senior Iranian political figure, asked this morning why reporters from the New York Times and Fox News aren’t covering the “achievements of victory” that Trump is claiming at Al Dhafra, Al Udeid, and Ali Al Salem, the bases that have been hit repeatedly and in several cases abandoned by U.S. forces. He sarcastically suggested a congressional delegation visit those bases to see the victories firsthand. Trump’s lies about the realities on the ground simply make the Iranian regime emboldened.
Meanwhile, the State Department announced it has made countering foreign “anti-American propaganda” a top priority and will use what it calls “every tool in our diplomatic toolkit,” including, per a cable signed by Marco Rubio and reported by The Guardian, directing U.S. embassies to work with Pentagon psychological operations units and deploy X, formerly Twitter, as a counter-propaganda platform.
Trump also posted a video this weekend comparing himself to Jesus on Palm Sunday. He said, and I’m not paraphrasing: “They call me King.” He then said if he were actually a king he’d be doing a lot more, and blamed JD Vance preemptively for anything that goes wrong.
We’ll keep you posted every step of the way. Thanks for reading, watching, and subscribing.
