Donald Trump wants to know who leaked details about the missing U.S. airman who was rescued from the mountains of Iran in a high-stakes mission on Sunday.

The U.S. carried out a daring operation to extract two airmen who ejected from the F-15E fighter jet that was shot down by Iranian forces on Friday. The military plucked the pilot out of Iranian territory on Friday, and later pulled out the second service member who was hiding in the mountains.

But during a press conference on Monday, Trump accused a media organization of jeopardizing the mission for reporting that a second airman was missing on Friday. He did not name the media organization, but threatened to jail the journalist who first reported that a second airman was missing.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Having only read Trump’s comments on this, he says Iran didn’t know there was a 2nd missing person until the story was leaked. If true, the journalist and reporter put the pilots life in danger.

    Is there some context we’re missing?

    Now, arresting the journalists is dumb, but definitely seems like a dick move to report this.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      The plane was a two-seater. Thinking that Iran didn’t know there was a second pilot requires the assumption that Iranian intelligence is incapable of looking the plane up on Wikipedia.

      Basically, I trust Iran far more than I trust the President of the United States.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It actually assumes that Iran doesn’t know the capabilities of its own neighbors, since a lot of Middle Eastern nations, including Israel, are operators of the F15.

      • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        People keep saying this in this thread. But there are multiple versions of the F15 and many are single operator aircraft. I don’t know much about our current inventory or what ones are in operation. Is there evidence of what model of F15 was shot down? I know one was the dual operator F15E. But I haven’t seen any info on the other one that they were not covering as much. The one that crashed outside of Iran.

      • danc4498@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Thanks for a legit answer. Still don’t see a reason why the information was leaked. What was gained? Outside of an exclusive.

        I get that journalists are allowed to print whatever they want, but usually they will not print something if it might cause harm. This seems like one of those cases.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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          2 days ago

          I don’t think information like that can be considered “leaked”, though. Of course there was a second pilot. That kind of plane has two. It would have been weird and mysterious if it didn’t have a second pilot.

          • danc4498@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Maybe it was possible they already got the other pilot. Maybe it was possible they confirmed the other pilot died already.

            There’s a reason why this story was reported as a leak and not as “common sense tells you 2 pilots are missing, not 1”.

    • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Sending the pilot to die as a distraction from rampant child rape and other crimes seems like a dick move on the pedophile president’s part.