On Easter Monday, April 6, 2026, President Donald Trump convened a White House press conference to celebrate what he called one of the most complex combat search-and-rescue operations in American military history — the back-to-back recovery of two U.S. Air Force aircrew members shot down inside Iran during Operation Epic Fury. Flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine, Trump recounted a nearly 50-hour saga that began when an F-15E Strike Eagle went down deep in hostile Iranian territory on the night of Thursday, April 2. The pilot was recovered in a dramatic daylight raid involving 21 aircraft; the weapons system officer — injured, bleeding, and hunted by Iranian forces and civilians alike — evaded capture for nearly 46 hours before being extracted in the pre-dawn hours of Easter Sunday. Trump praised the mission as historic, reserved fierce condemnation for an unidentified leaker who he says publicly revealed that a second airman was still missing, and announced he has given Iran until 8 p.m. Eastern Time on April 7 to reach an acceptable nuclear deal — or face the total destruction of every bridge and power plant in the country. He also revealed that not all senior military advisors supported the rescue missions, disclosed that CIA deception operations played a decisive role in misdirecting Iranian searchers, and confirmed that negotiations are actively underway with Iranian officials through Steve Witkoff and JD Vance, describing Iran as now “decapitated” militarily. Assistance from Claude AI.
Participants
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| Donald Trump | President of the United States |
| Pete Hegseth | Secretary of Defense |
| John Ratcliffe | Director of the Central Intelligence Agency |
| Gen. Dan Caine | Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff |
| Steve Witkoff | U.S. Special Envoy (present in room, referenced) |
| Jared Kushner | Senior Advisor (referenced) |
| JD Vance | Vice President (referenced, involved in negotiations) |
Topic-by-Topic Breakdown
The Shootdown: What Happened Thursday Night
Trump opened by describing the event that set everything in motion. Late Thursday night — April 2, 2026, at 10:10 p.m. Eastern Time (4:40 a.m. local time in Iran) — a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle, callsign “Dude 44,” was shot down deep inside Iranian territory while flying a mission as part of Operation Epic Fury.
General Caine provided the formal timeline. The Joint Personnel Recovery Center, which handles rescue operations for the U.S. Central Command area, immediately declared an “isolated personnel recovery event.” Both crew members — the pilot (Dude 44 Alpha, the front-seater) and the weapons system officer (Dude 44 Bravo, the back-seater, described as a colonel) — had safely ejected and were confirmed alive on Iranian soil via active rescue beacons.
What is an F-15E Strike Eagle? It’s a two-seat, dual-role fighter jet used by the U.S. Air Force for both air-to-air combat and precision ground strikes. The front-seat pilot flies the aircraft; the back-seat weapons system officer (WSO) operates sensors and weapons. Both seats have ejection capability.
Trump described the aircraft as downed by a shoulder-fired, handheld heat-seeking missile — noting it was a lucky hit after thousands of sorties in the operation had gone unchallenged. “The F-15 we lost last week was the first manned aircraft downed by the enemy in this entire operation,” he said, adding that U.S. forces had by that point conducted “more than 10,000 combat flights over Iran, striking more than 13,000 targets” over 37 days.
The First Rescue: A Daylight “Thunder Run” for Dude 44 Alpha
After confirming the pilot’s location, Trump said he was immediately asked to authorize a rescue. He ordered the military to “do whatever was necessary.” The decision was made quickly — Hegseth said it was authorized in less than two hours from when they established the pilot’s position, in the middle of the night.
General Caine described the rescue force in detail. It was an Air Force Combat Search and Rescue Task Force built around:
- A-10 Warthogs flying in the “Sandy” role — a tradition dating to Vietnam, where the lead aircraft positions itself between the downed aviator and enemy forces
- HC-130 Combat King II aircraft (aerial refueling and command platforms)
- HH-60 Jolly Green II helicopters (the primary extraction platform)
- Air Force Special Warfare Airmen, including combat rescue officers and pararescuemen (PJs)
What is a “Sandy”? Named after the callsign used in Vietnam for A-1 Skyraider pilots performing the same role, a Sandy aircraft has one job: find the survivor, bring the rescue helicopters forward, and physically interpose itself between the downed pilot and any enemy trying to reach him. It’s one of the most dangerous assignments in combat aviation.
The task force flew in broad daylight — an extraordinary choice. “Seven hours over Iran” in full daylight, Trump said repeatedly, marveling that the U.S. would attempt it. The force entered Iranian airspace, took fire from ground forces, and pressed to the objective area. The A-10s used drones and other aircraft to suppress Iranian forces trying to reach the pilot.
During the mission, one of the Sandy A-10s was hit by enemy fire. That pilot continued fighting, escorted the rescue team out, then flew the damaged aircraft to another country (unnamed), determined it could not land, and safely ejected over friendly territory. He was recovered and is reported to be fine.
After picking up Dude 44 Alpha, the HH-60 Jolly Green helicopter came under fire from what Caine described as “every single person in Iran who had a small arms weapon.” A trailing aircraft took several hits; the crew suffered minor injuries and are expected to fully recover.
Dude 44 Alpha was recovered Friday afternoon. Trump said 21 aircraft were involved in this first wave.
The Second Rescue: 46 Hours, a Mountain, and a CIA Deception Campaign
The weapons system officer — Dude 44 Bravo — presented a far more complex challenge. When the two crew members ejected at high speed, they landed miles apart. Dude 44 Bravo was injured “quite badly,” Trump said, describing him as bleeding profusely. He had landed in an area “teeming with terrorists from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” militia, and local authorities. Iran had publicly offered a large cash reward to anyone who captured the pilot.
Despite his injuries, the officer followed survival training and began climbing into mountainous terrain to evade capture — moving away from the crash site (where searchers would concentrate) and ascending to higher ground. He treated his own wounds and, when able, used his emergency beacon to transmit his location.
The CIA’s role here was pivotal. Director Ratcliffe described the agency deploying “human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses” to find the officer. On Saturday morning, CIA assets located him in a mountain crevice — still invisible to Iranian forces, but confirmed alive to U.S. command. That confirmation was relayed from Ratcliffe to Hegseth to the president, and the operation moved to its execution phase.
Critically, the CIA simultaneously ran a deception campaign — feeding false location information to Iranian searchers to keep them looking in the wrong places. Trump elaborated: the military deliberately dispersed aircraft to seven different decoy locations to confuse Iran’s large-scale manhunt. “Thousands of people were looking,” he said. “We wanted them to look in different areas.”
Trump also described a remarkable intelligence breakthrough: a CIA asset 40 miles away spotted movement in dense mountain terrain and locked a camera on it for 45 minutes. The object barely moved. Then it stood up. “It was the head of a human being,” Trump said. “That was really the beginning of something incredible.”
The second rescue mission was massively larger, involving 155 aircraft total: four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft, and more. Hegseth reported that from the moment the pilots went down, a secure coordination call ran continuously for 45 hours and 56 minutes without interruption.
The operation launched Saturday night and into Easter Sunday, fighting through “marginal weather” and constant enemy contact. The rescue force was overhead-protected by tactical drones, strike aircraft, and what Caine called “an air armada.” They fought through “multiple simultaneous contingencies” — including a critical problem with the extraction aircraft.
The exfiltration nearly failed. Trump described the rescue team landing on wet sandy farmland — not a runway — to pick up the stranded officer. The large transport planes became severely bogged down in the mud and could not take off. The contingency plan: three smaller helicopters had been brought in disassembled aboard larger aircraft. Ground crews reassembled all three helicopters in less than 10 minutes and used faster, lighter aircraft to fly everyone out. Trump said the original planes were deliberately destroyed (“blown up to smithereens”) on the ground to prevent Iran from examining the sensitive equipment aboard.
Caine provided the formal conclusion: at midnight Eastern Time on Easter Sunday, more than 50 hours after the operation began, the Joint Personnel Recovery Center declared both Dude 44 Alpha and Dude 44 Bravo returned to friendly control. Hegseth added a detail that drew wide attention: the WSO’s first radio message after finally activating his beacon was simply, “God is good.” Shot down on Good Friday, hidden in a mountain crevice through Saturday, extracted and flown out of Iran as the sun rose on Easter Sunday — Hegseth called him “a pilot reborn.”
No American lives were lost. No American service members were killed in either rescue operation.
The Leak: Trump Threatens Prosecution
In one of the press conference’s more charged moments, Trump said the second rescue mission was significantly complicated by a media leak that disclosed — while the operation was still underway — that one airman had been recovered but a second was still missing.
Before the leak, Trump said, Iran did not know there was a second crew member being sought. Once the information became public, Iranian authorities issued a nationwide alert and offered a public reward for the pilot’s capture, effectively turning millions of Iranian civilians into a civilian search force.
“That’s a sick person,” Trump said of the leaker. “Probably didn’t realize the extent of how bad it was.” He said the person’s disclosure “put this mission at great risk, put that man at great risk, and put the hundreds of people that went in looking for him” at risk.
Trump announced a specific legal threat: he intends to go to the media company that published the story and demand the source’s identity under a national security claim. “Give it up or go to jail,” he said, adding that the reporter who wrote the story would also face potential imprisonment if they refuse. He said investigators “think we’ll be able to find it out.”
Internal Military Dissent: Not Everyone Was on Board
When Fox News correspondent Mark Meredith asked whether everyone in the administration supported the rescue decision, Trump gave a notable answer: not everyone was on board.
“There were military people, very professional, that preferred not doing it,” he said. He stressed that Hegseth and Caine were “totally on board,” which he said was critical. But other unnamed senior military personnel argued against the mission on the grounds that sending hundreds of personnel into the heart of a heavily militarized country was too risky. “You just don’t do this,” Trump paraphrased their objection. “You don’t go into the heart of a very powerful military.”
Trump said he understood the concern — that hundreds of Americans could have been killed — but chose to proceed. “I just felt it was worth it,” he said. “If you would have told me that we would have been successful, gotten both — and nobody was even essentially injured, I would have said that would be impossible.”
He did not name any of the dissenting officials.
The Iran Ultimatum: Deal by 8 P.M. April 7 or Face “Stone Ages”
The press conference served as a formal deadline announcement. Trump confirmed that Iran has until 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 to reach a nuclear deal acceptable to the United States, or face a devastating escalation targeting civilian infrastructure.
“After that, they’re going to have no bridges, they’re going to have no power plants — stone ages, yeah, stone ages,” Trump said.
He elaborated: the U.S. military has the capacity to destroy every bridge and every power plant in Iran within four hours if ordered. He explicitly said he does not want to do this — estimating it would take Iran 100 years to rebuild — but framed it as a necessary threat.
Trump acknowledged that Iran had requested a seven-day extension to negotiations. He said he told envoy Steve Witkoff to grant them ten days, which has now effectively lapsed. He pushed the deadline one extra day past Easter, saying he “wanted to be a nice person” and thought it “inappropriate the day after Easter.”
He confirmed that negotiations are actively ongoing through Witkoff and Vice President Vance, and described Iran as negotiating “in good faith,” though he added uncertainty. “We’re going to find out,” he said.
He also announced that today — April 6 — would feature the largest volume of strikes since day one of the operation, with even more strikes planned for April 7. “And then Iran has a choice,” Hegseth added. “Choose wisely, because this president does not play around.”
What does the deal need to include? Trump said any acceptable agreement must include “free traffic of oil and everything else” through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had previously threatened to close. He called the Strait a major priority — noting that even without warships, a single person with a truck-mounted water mine can effectively threaten global oil shipping lanes.
The Strait of Hormuz and “To the Victor Go the Spoils”
A reporter asked whether Trump was open to a deal that did not include the Strait of Hormuz. He was not. Trump described the Strait as uniquely difficult to secure militarily because even individual actors could drop mines from small boats. He said Iran’s navy has been destroyed, its air force eliminated, 158 ships sunk in three days, and its radar and communications knocked out — but the mine threat from non-military actors remains.
He also disclosed, in response to a question about taking Iran’s oil, that the U.S. has already extracted over 100 million barrels of Venezuelan oil to Houston following the U.S. military operation there (a separate conflict he referenced for comparison). “To the victor go the spoils,” he said — a phrase he noted has been absent from American policy for perhaps 100 years. He said he is open to a similar arrangement with Iranian oil but would prefer a negotiated peace.
War Crimes Question: New York Times Exchange
A sharp exchange occurred when a reporter from the New York Times — identified as “Zolan” — asked whether Trump was concerned that threatening to bomb power plants and bridges “amount to war crimes” under the Geneva Conventions.
Trump did not engage the legal substance directly. He said he hoped he would not have to carry out the strikes. He invoked the 47-year history of Iran’s nuclear program, accused previous presidents of weakness, and said flatly: “We’re never going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
When the reporter followed up — “And if it means violating international law?” — Trump cut him off, attacked the Times’ election coverage, called the reporter “fake,” and moved on to the next question.
Iran’s Nuclear Program: Historical Context and Obama Deal Criticism
Trump used the press conference to provide his framing of the broader conflict’s origins. He argued that President Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal (formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) was “a path to a nuclear weapon” — a short-term arrangement that was set to expire and would have left Iran with legal pathways to enrichment. He said terminating that deal in 2018 was “one of the best things I ever did.”
He also took credit for the B-2 bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites approximately eight months prior, saying CNN’s characterization of the strikes as incomplete was wrong: “It was obliteration.” He argued that without those strikes, Iran would currently possess nuclear weapons, and he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (whom he said he spoke with the day prior) that in that scenario, “Israel would have been extinguished.”
He additionally referenced his 2020 decision to kill Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, saying Soleimani had been planning to destroy five U.S. military bases and has “never been replaced.”
Iranian Civilians and Human Rights
Several reporters pressed Trump on whether bombing power plants punishes ordinary Iranians for their government’s actions. Trump’s response was a sustained defense of the strikes on humanitarian grounds.
He claimed U.S. forces have intercepted communications from Iranians living near bombing sites begging for the strikes to continue — “please keep bombing” — because they want the regime toppled. He described the Islamic Republic’s brutal suppression of domestic protests in graphic terms: women’s marches dispersed by snipers positioned on rooftops, shooting protesters “right between the eyes.” He referenced a champion wrestler and his two friends who were publicly executed for speaking about liberty.
“They want freedom for Iran,” Trump said. “It’s very hard for them to protest.” He said he actively tells Iranian civilians not to go out and protest because the personal risk is too great. He praised the Persian people as “incredible, smart, brilliant” and described Iran as a great country “25 years ago” before the current regime.
He also dismissed criticism from progressive members of Congress — specifically invoking “AOC plus three” — arguing that American politicians who call for Iranian freedom do not acknowledge that the regime kills gay people by throwing them from buildings.
On the question of what happens to protesters if the current regime falls, Trump said he is now dealing with a “much different” and “far less radical” Iranian leadership than existed a month ago. He described the new interlocutors as “smarter” and “sharper.”
Regime Change and the Negotiating Position
Trump was asked directly whether he is seeking regime change in Iran. His answer was carefully calibrated. “We have regime change,” he said — meaning the Iranian leadership has already been transformed by the military campaign — “but we didn’t do this for regime change.” He said his sole stated goal has been preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
He declined to describe his end-state plan in detail, calling it strategically unwise to publicize military plans. “I have the best plan of all, but I’m not going to tell you what my plan is,” he said.
On the question of whether a ceasefire would include Israel, Trump said he could not discuss that aspect of negotiations but confirmed that Iran is “a willing participant” in talks and “would like to be able to make a deal.”
NATO Criticism and Allied Support
Trump delivered a sharp rebuke of NATO allies and traditional U.S. partners, saying that when he sought help with the Iran campaign — including landing rights — he was turned down by the alliance. “We’d rather wait till you win,” he paraphrased their response. “I said, I don’t need help after we win.”
He extended his criticism broadly: South Korea, Japan, and Australia also declined to provide assistance, despite the U.S. maintaining tens of thousands of troops in both Japan and South Korea. He called NATO “a paper tiger,” saying Russian President Putin is not afraid of NATO — only of the United States.
Countries that did help, he said, include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait — though he noted that Kuwait accidentally shot down three American aircraft with Patriot missiles, mistaking them for enemy planes. He called it “unfriendly fire.”
He also disclosed an extraordinary defensive achievement: on one occasion, Iran fired 101 missiles at the USS Abraham Lincoln. All 101 were intercepted.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is reportedly visiting Trump on Wednesday, and Trump said allies are now suddenly “wanting to send things” after the successful operation. He attributed the breakdown in alliance support — at least in part — to his ongoing push for Greenland. “It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland,” he said. “We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us and I said, bye-bye.”
Venezuela Comparison and “To the Victor Go the Spoils”
Trump repeatedly compared the Iran campaign to Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, describing the Venezuela operation as completed in “about 45 minutes” with no significant casualties. He said the U.S. has since extracted more than 100 million barrels of oil from Venezuela, which he described as an American partner nation. He said former President Nicolás Maduro is now in prison awaiting trial.
He compared the current leadership in Venezuela favorably to the post-war governance failures in Iraq, where the Bush administration fired the Iraqi military, police, and government workers — a decision Trump said directly created the conditions for ISIS to form.
Questions and Answers: Quick Reference
Q: Was Kurdistan’s resumption of oil exports expected? Trump: “We’ve gotten along with the Kurds for a long time, so I expected that.”
Q: Should the Kurds enter Iran? Trump: “I’d rather have them stay away. They bring death, I mean, to themselves.”
Q: What happens to Iranian protesters if there’s a ceasefire? Trump: Said a new, less radical regime is in place and that “it’s very positive” if they assume control. Would mean far less radicalization than under the previous leadership.
Q: Do you believe God supports U.S. actions? Trump: “I do. Because God is good.” Added: “I’ve ended eight wars. Nobody’s ever done it.”
Q: You called Iranians ‘crazy bastards’ on Truth Social. What do you say to critics who question your mental health? Trump: “I haven’t heard that but if that’s the case, you’re going to have to have more people like me.”
Q: Is Iran charging tolls on the Strait acceptable to end the conflict? Trump: “I’d rather do that than let them have them.” Mused about the U.S. charging tolls itself.
Source
Trump, Donald. “Press Conference: Donald Trump Holds a Press Conference at the White House – April 6, 2026.” Roll Call / Factbase, 6 Apr. 2026, factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-april-6-2026.