An Iran war that was already proving quite unpopular with the American people has entered a new, more problematic phase. That comes with the news that a US fighter jet was shot down over Iran.
There remains a lot we don’t know, including the status of the two crew members. While CNN has reported one of them has been rescued and is receiving medical treatment, we don’t know the fate of the other.
And that was followed by news that Iran hit a second US combat aircraft on Friday. The pilot was able to navigate the plane out of Iranian territory before ejecting from the aircraft and was subsequently rescued, a US official told CNN.
Neither of these incidents means Iran is suddenly on anything close to an equal footing militarily. And there have thus far been limited American casualties, including no known deaths in the last three weeks.
These events also puncture the Trump administration’s claims about its complete dominance of the skies over Iran — along with the veneer of impenetrability it has attempted to construct over the past month.
Those claims had already been contradicted in a number of cases. But this is a case in point.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have suggested the United States and Israel had something amounting to free rein to fly over Iran. They cast Tehran as having no ability to counteract that.