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What is normally a period of religious observation, or at least a bit of a holiday in the Judeo-Christian world, has instead produced a major embarrassment and probable setback for the US in its prosecution of the Iran war, via the wrecking of an F-15 jet in Iran and loss or capture of one pilot, and at least one rescue helicopter also having been downed. Because we are in fog of information and narrative, please forgive me if the information here is contradicted by later reports.
To step back a bit: the war was in great and increasingly obvious trouble even before Iran demonstrated that it air defenses, contrary to repeated Trump claims, had not been wiped out.1 The US and Israel are running out of weapons. The Trump-backed Hegseth purge of senior members of the armed servicse is developing the feel of the Nixon Saturday Night Massacre, and for the same reason: the are opposing orders to do things like commit war crimes, which are against US as well as international law. Chas Freeman has argued that Trump telling NATO members to go open the Strait of Hormuz themselves is tantamount to telling them to negotiate transit agreements.
Yet is is amazing to see supposed experts parrot pro-US talking points (see a fresh interview on Aljazeera as an example), of US aircraft being lost to friendly fire when there’s ample reason to discount those claims, and asserting that the US is making many sorties into Iran, when it appears that that is at best occasional and the great majority of strikes into Iran are done at standoff ranges. So Team Trump has still been performing well in the war of narratives.
Robert Barnes, who has a lot of Trump Administration connections, contends that the ground assault into Iran was set for this weekend, but Trump did a temporary TACO due so Susie Wiles under pressure from JD Vance managing to get some real information before him. This comes after a section where Barnes discusses yet another “no scheme is too incredible for Trump not to try it” possible later scapegoating of Gabbard for the Iran fiasco:
The transcript is choppy because that is how Barnes talks:
And as she [Gabbard] reported to Congress after the war even started, they had not found there was any evidence of any nuclear threat from Iran. And they had not found any evidence that Iran was any kind of imminent threat. And she said the president gets to unilaterally decide constitutionally whether such a imminent threat exists. But that was the only defense he could mount for the president because there was no other and the so you would think that. But the what Trump is doing is he’s starting uh what happened this past week is vice president Vance was able to persuade using data and information that we and others provided to his office, persuade the chief of staff Susie Willes that she had to stop gatekeeping Trump and blocking access to independent information and had to specifically instruct the generals, the military and the intelligence community to relay unfettered unlimited, and the energy community unfettered unlimited information about what was bad happening related to the Iran war.
So that’s why she finally did. That’s why Trump’s speech on Thursday or on Wednesday rather was a muted kind of speech rather than full celebration of victory rather than announcement of ground troops going in which is I believe what he originally intended to do. He had to pull that back and hedge it because all of this was being finally presented to him. But his reaction was rage. This is his rage is more and more out of control than it’s ever been. There’s his parts of his mental faculties. You saw him start to slur words at the beginning of that written prepared statement.
Larry Wilkerson in Trump’s Premature Claim About Air Supremacy and Obliterated Iranian Air Defenses tallies the US losses on Good Friday:
During his Wednesday night speech, Donald Trump made the following claim about Iran’s air defenses:
They have no anti-aircraft equipment, their radar’s 100% annihilated, we are unstoppable as a military force.
It appears that President Trump was a bit premature. The US Air Force had a difficult day on Friday:
➡️F-15E (48th Fighter Wing) — Shot down in southwestern Iran. Pilot rescued; WSO still missing.
➡️A-10C Thunderbolt II — Shot down and crashed into the Persian Gulf. Pilot reportedly recovered.
➡️2X HH-60G Pave Hawk — Hit during CSAR mission, one crash-landed across the border in Iraq. All crew reportedly rescued.
➡️KC-135R Stratotanker — Emergency squawk 7700 around 10:00 UTC near Tel Aviv.
➡️F-16CJ “Wild Weasel” (F-16C Block 50/52, SEAD configuration) — Emergency squawk 7700 over Saudi Arabia near the Iraqi border around 15:00 UTC; later disappeared from FlightRadar.
➡️KC-135R Stratotanker — Emergency squawk 7700 around 19:00 UTC near Tel Aviv.
It appears that Iran has no centralized air defense C2 or any kind of joint engagement zone (JEZ) anymore. However, as evidenced by the incidents above, Iran appears to be relying on Vietnam-style guerrilla tactics of shoot-and-scoot air defense with their passive and highly tactical indigenous system… The IR-SA-7’s (pronounced “Ur-sah-seven”). Some are specially developed missiles that can loiter at altitude, almost like a glider, completely passive, that lie in wait for one of the US older generation fighters, tankers or other support aircraft to wander too close and then hone-in.
Keep in mind that Johnson’s view that what Iran has or has left is primitive may be Oorientalism Consider:
Iran’s Majid air-defense system, officially designated AD-08, is a domestically produced, road-mobile, short-range surface-to-air missile platform that first appeared in a military parade in April 2021 and has since emerged as the most consequential weapons development of… pic.twitter.com/JI81FXb45l
— FrameTheGlobeNews (@FrameGlobeNews) April 4, 2026
Moreover, as Ted Postol has been saying for a very long time, air defense systems are a scam. Witness how shocked military experts were at the poor performance of Israel’s vaunted systems in a postage-stamp sized and therefore presumably defendable nation. Even best-of-breed Russia, with its huge layered air defense system, still suffers successful strikes by Ukraine from time to time. In a really big country, it is impossible to protect everything well, and Iran’s main line of defense has been to go deep underground. In fairness, Iran may not have made enough allowance for US and Israel enthusiasm for committing war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure and non-combatants.
In addition, Iran has shown it is well aware of the US/Western reliance and arguably over-reliance on radar-based systems. That is a big reason Iran quickly went after THAAD radars and is now hunting their backup, AWACS jets. The F-35 is stealthy only to radar detection; it can be “seen” thermally and also reportedly emits a lot of electronic signals. And my understanding is that helicopters and jets flying low can significantly evade radar.
Iran may have also (per the THAAD case) have recognized that radars are vulnerable and may have separately made a point of employing additional means of threat detection. Recall the speculation that Iran used thermal imaging so as to track and fire at an F-35; ed Postol speculated that Iran may also be using audio surveillance, which he depicts as effective over relatively short ranges.
More from Simplicius in Disaster: Operation “Stone Age” Begins to Backfire with a tweet with an even longer list of aircraft hits:
One OSINT account’s breakdown:
There have been several incidents involving U.S. aircraft in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operation (AO) within the last 24 hours:
1. A U.S. Air Force F-15E “Strike Eagle” was hit by Iranian fire and crashed in Iran. Both crew members survived, with 1 being rescued, and a large combat search and rescue operation is ongoing for the 2nd.
2. A U.S. Air Force HH-60W “Jolly Green II” conducting operations to rescue the downed F-15 crew took small-arms fire with at least 1 crew member injured, but it continued back to base.
3. The pilot of a U.S. Air Force A-10C “Thunderbolt II” ejected over the Persian Gulf, with Iran claiming responsibility for shooting it down. The pilot was recovered safely.
4. A U.S. Air Force F-16C “Fighting Falcon” briefly showed on flight tracking sites squawking 7700 (emergency) over Iraq.
5. A U.S. Air Force KC-135 “Stratotanker” was squawking 7700 (emergency) over Israel.
Photos of destroyed Chinook.
The F-16 was said to have squawked an emergency code but likely returned to base.
And the kinetic war entries from NO1:
F-15E shot down over Iran, A-10 crashed near Hormuz on the same day. One F-15E crew member rescued by US special forces deep inside Iran; second crew member eventually extracted after a second CSAR team deployed. A Black Hawk helicopter was struck by Iranian fire during the rescue. An A-10 Warthog also went down near the Strait of Hormuz, pilot rescued. Iran used advanced passive infrared detection to blindside the F-15E per ABC News. Multiple sources: Axios, NYT via ZH, Lord Bebo, Babak Taghvaee. Confidence: HIGH…
Iran’s sustained ballistic missile barrages hitting Israel hard during Passover.Multiple waves targeting Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, with individual salvos of 100-380+ alerts. Iranian missiles struck central Israel with cluster warheads. Iranian forces also hit Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery and a desalination plant. Kuwait intercepted 7 ballistic missiles, 2 cruise missiles, and 26 drones in 24 hours. Confidence: HIGH
Trump proposes record $1.5 trillion in war spending. Defense budget exceeds $1T for first time in US history per Breaking Defense via Lord Bebo. No Ukraine funding in the FY2027 budget – the word “Ukraine” doesn’t appear once. Confidence: HIGH
Sadly even in the face of this fiasco, Trump is (of course) doubling down:
I just heard from a source very close to top of the White House that, following today’s shootdown of an F-15, an A-10, and the successful hits on multiple helicopters and other aircraft, the WH is choosing further escalation, including US troops on the ground. This would be…
— James R. Webb (@JamesWebb_16) April 4, 2026
Admittedly, the Janta Ka clip below suggests that people in Iran are being solicited to impede the search and rescue effort and help capture the pilot alive. They are also seeking to take down the rescue helicopters based on old fashioned visual acquisition. Nima of Dialogue Works hails from that part of Iran and says that rifle ownership and competence is common. Keep in mind this search and rescue mission could result in more losses of men and materiel.
A fresh Aljazeera update says the pilot is still missing:
Larry Wilkerson said recently that he had gotten a fresh report but not confirmed that Russia had recently delivered a large number of S-500s with Russian operators. But those would likely be in process of being integrated.
Amazingly, Trump has had the cheek to ask for a 48 hour ceasefire. What about “no” don’t you understand? Hindustan Times reports that Iran’s response included more hard pounding of Israel:
Conventional wisdom is that Israelis still support the the wars by a considerable majority. This report suggests that is starting to buckle:
Larry Wilkerson had an important and as always very informative talk with Chris Hedges.2 I had not realized that Wilkerson had flown many rounds as a helicopter operator in the Vietnam War. Wilkerson give a great deal of detail as to the comparatively few options the US has for mounting operations in Iran. He concludes that Trump will try to do something that is limited in terms of the scale of the war and any strategic impact but still showy:
The germane section from the mildly-cleaned up machine transcript:
Johnson: Um, this I just I just saw flash across my screen this news that Hegseth is calling all general officers to show up uh for a command performance at Quantico.
Krapivnik: Well, we’ve done this before.
Johnson: Well, yeah, but this this one’s going to be closed door. He’s not going to do this open session. But it begs the question if you’re calling everybody from you know if you’re calling all the general officers in command to show up well that means then they’re not going to be conducting any operations next week ground or otherwise in the theater there in West Asia and Iran Persian Gulf because the commanders won’t be there…. I understand the first time he brought them all in, Trump just wanted an audience, a big audience, but nobody does that. Nobody works like that in any kind of professional organization. You fly, if anything, you bring in the top commanders of a of a region, you give them the orders or your vision for the miss, and then they go pump out the orders for the subordinate units, … If if somebody wanted to take out 800 generals at once, you entire command structure.
Krapivnik: You know, corporations like when I worked for, Halliburton, had a policy that more than two vice presidents could not be on the same plane just in case. And now you’re getting the entire leadership of the US military all under one roof in one location again.
Larry Wilkerson, early on in a new talk with Larry Johnson and Nima, lists the grievances among the top military officials that Hegseth forced out. They go beyond the reckless conduct of the war. The chief of staff was particularly exercised about forced resignations of black and women officers. Another big issue is the interference with chaplains and an active effort to restrict all religious support and counsel to Christianity and Judaism.3
I don’t want to seem Pollyannish, but getting all the top brass together is risky for another reason. I had warned one way the Trump Administration could end or be castrated was via a soft military coup, as in officers refusing to execute his routinely illegal orders. Getting them all together facilitates communication of discontent, and in person (if they are smart about it) reduces surveillance risk.
I have not been able to confirm this tweet, but if accurate, it says the fired officers are not going quietly:
🚨 🇺🇸 Breaking:
An hour after announcing his resignation, the US Army Chief of Staff says: “A madman will lead the great US military to ruin.” pic.twitter.com/OpRARGLpcT
— MENA Pulse (@MENA_Puls) April 4, 2026
In keeping:
CONFIRMED: Pentagon and the US central command is facing anxiety and confusion as Generals have openly defied illegal orders. High profile sackings on going. There’s a silent voice beneath the surface…..
— Royal Ambassador (@JaokooMoses) April 3, 2026
And this turn also does not bode well for the Administration. From The Hill in GOP praise pours in for Army chief of staff ousted by Hegseth:
Republicans are rallying behind Gen. Randy George after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly fired him from the Pentagon, praising the former Army chief of staff as a steady and accomplished military leader.
A Pentagon official told The Hill on Thursday that Hegseth asked George to step down as the Army’s 41st chief of staff and retire immediately. He joins the more than a dozen senior military officers dismissed by Hegseth since the start of his term.
George’s abrupt exit — coming amid the ongoing conflict with Iran — was met with apparent shock from Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who told Newsmax’s Ed Henry that he would be “very curious to know why” the four-star general was fired….
Support for George quickly poured in online, with House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) lauding his efforts to recruit and modernize the branch….
Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), another HASC member, described George as a “great general, principled leader, & a committed American.”…
The ouster also struck a chord with retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane, who said Friday morning on Fox News that he did not agree with the decision.
When you’ve lost Jack Keane….
Larry Johnson and Stas also discussed in detail how Iran can get oil exported. It has five ways to get it into tankers. Kharg is the best due to the ability to load multiple huge tankers at once but is hardly indispensable.
Some informational hygiene matters. First, as several readers pointed out on yesterday’s Iran war thread, Bugs pointed to this Al Mayadeen article, IRGC decries attack on US embassy in Riyadh, says executed by ‘Israel’. Second, Iran has also denied hitting the Kuwait desalination plant and also depicted that as a false flag. In a fresh talk with Nima, Chas Freeman deemed that to be credible, because among other reasons, Israel hates Kuwait the most of all Gulf states.
And some good historical background for those with the time and interest:
Finished for today. See you tomorrow!
____
1 We had argued that given early threats to deploy US forces, that Iran may have decided not to show some of its air defense capabilities so as to better lure in US aircraft for a bigger kill.
And as for Iran’s sophistication, another reminder from Chuck L:
معلومة
لدى إيران سلاحين استراتيجيين لم تستخدمهما بعد
ذكرنا أمس طائرات (حديد 110) و (أرش 2) اللي بدأت تستعملهم إيران في ضرباتها للمواقع الحيوية منذ أيام
اليوم هكلمكم عن صاروخين جديدين محدش بيتكلم عنهم، لكن جنرالات إيران أشاروا لهم ولغيرهم ضمن المفاجآت العسكرية القادمة
أولا:… pic.twitter.com/cTwZh9Unlt
— سامح عسكر (@sameh_asker) April 3, 2026
Including the machine-generated translation since I infer you have to have a Twitter account to have that function avaiable:
Information
Iran has two strategic weapons that it has not yet used.
Yesterday we mentioned the (Hadid 110) and (Arash 2) aircraft that Iran has begun using in its strikes on vital sites in recent days.
Today I’m going to talk to you about two new missiles that no one is talking about, but Iranian generals have hinted at them and others as part of upcoming military surprises.
First: Hoveyzeh missile
It is a winged cruise missile that flies at low altitudes and has a semi-stealth capability to evade radars, and to attack its targets with a small margin of error not exceeding a few meters, and according to Iranian sources the margin of error is (one meter).
Its speed is 800 km/h, a speed similar to that of Tomahawk missiles from the same family.
The Hoveizeh missile has a range of 1,300 km and a 400 kg high-explosive warhead, meaning it can destroy large areas and vital targets. It is primarily designed to strike fixed land targets such as military bases, oil installations, and other facilities. Its size makes it capable of causing significant damage, even if it is not 100% accurate.
Iran conducted a successful test of it in 2019 at a distance of 1200 km, which is sufficient distance to strike Israel from a nearby Iranian border point, and so far it has not #ايران to use it, nor has it decided yet to use its arsenal of surface-to-surface guided missiles.
Second: Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis missile
It is also a winged cruise missile designed for naval targets and flies at a low altitude close to the water to evade radars. It uses artificial intelligence to jam and accurately identify its targets, and is considered the only declared Iranian weapon that uses artificial intelligence.
The missile has a speed of approximately 700 km/h and can also be used against land targets, but it is designed primarily for fleets and aircraft carriers, in addition to land and coastal targets such as ports.
The Abu Mahdi missile has a range of 1000 km and its warhead weighs 400 kg, meaning a large number of them are sufficient to destroy and sink large naval vessels. Therefore, American aircraft carriers and their accompanying naval vessels stay further away from the Iranian coast than that distance to avoid falling into the Iranian “fire line.” This, in turn, exhausts the American aircraft on board the carrier and forces them to use other aircraft to refuel, which doubles the risk.
This missile can be launched from land-based platforms, meaning it is a force that can be launched from Iranian land at any time against enemy fleets. This makes the idea of opening #مضيق_هرمز by force a crazy and suicidal idea.
It is not known exactly how much of Iran’s stockpile of those important missiles it possesses.
But actual production of them began in 2019 and the latter entered service in 2023. According to Iran’s high production rates for its weapons, it is expected that Iran possesses a huge strategic stockpile of them that may reach (several thousand), which means that we are facing a large Iranian firepower that has not yet entered the field.
2 I have to quibble about a couple of issues. One is the long discussion by Wilkerson at the top that this war is to prevent China from building a land bridge to Europe. Ahem, Netanyahu has been trying to get the US to go to war with Iran for 30+ years. Similarly, US designs against Iran well predate China being a perceived threat (remember ChiMerica? Even after China became an economic powerhouse, we thought we were besties until 2017):
U. S. General Wesley Clark (2007): “We are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing it off with Iran” pic.twitter.com/jVaPRU3CpW
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) March 6, 2026
Now it may be that the China angle got the China hawks on board. But it can’t be considered a big drive.
Second is that Hedges and Wilkerson both treat Khargh Island as the only way to for Iran to export oil. As Stas describes in the talk with Larry Johnson above, Iran has four other options.
3 When taking care of my aging mother, I wound up watching a lot of the TV show NCIS: Los Angeles, which had the fabulous actress Linda Hunt. Its cast includes the rapper LL Cool J playing Sam Hunt, a legendary Navy Seal/Seal trainer…who was Muslim. So a Muslim as an impressive military officer had been a pop culture item.
