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Declaring that “this was one of our better Easters,” President Donald Trump started his news conference Monday by speaking about the dramatic rescue of two U.S. airmen in Iran over the weekend.
Watch in our video player above.
The president began describing the rescue efforts from Friday and over the weekend after two airmen ejected and landed alive “deep in enemy territory” in Iran.
WATCH: Trump sends warning to Iran at White House Easter Egg Roll
Trump said 21 aircraft were deployed to help with the search and rescue in the first wave, flying for hours under “very, very heavy enemy fire.” He said the U.S. has one helicopter with many bullets in it.
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Trump says the downed weapons officer followed his training to get as far away from the crash site as possible.
When a plane crashes in hostile territory, “they all head right to that site, you want to be as far away as you can,” Trump said.
READ MORE: What to know about the daring rescue of two U.S. aviators shot down in Iran
Trump says the officer was “bleeding profusely” but was able climb mountainous terrain and contact U.S. forces to communicate his location. Rescuers mobilized a massive response that included subterfuge to confuse the Iranians about where they were looking.
The president described the scale of the operation undertaken by the U.S. to rescue the second airman from the downed aircraft — which included 155 aircraft.
More specifically, it included four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, and 13 rescue aircraft, among others, Trump said.
READ MORE: Iran rejects latest ceasefire proposal as Trump deadline approaches
Much of it was an effort to throw off the Iranians, who were also looking for the missing crew member, the president said.
“We were bringing them all over and a lot of it was subterfuge,” Trump said. “We wanted to have them think he was in a different location.”
Trump threatened to jail the journalist who first reported that U.S. forces were searching for an F-15 weapons officer shot down in Iran, if they don’t reveal their sources.
“The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say, and that doesn’t last long,” Trump said.
Trump didn’t name the journalist or news organization. He said the leak tipped off the Iranians, endangering the officer and his rescuers. He called the leaker “a sick person.”
The Defense secretary, who has frequently infused his leadership of the Pentagon with references to Christianity and the language of his faith, said the airman who evaded capture for more than a day was shot down on Good Friday, “hidden in a cave” on Saturday, and on Easter Sunday, “a pilot reborn, all home and accounted for.”
Hegseth said that when the airman was finally able to activate an emergency transponder, his first transmitted message was: “God is good.”
Speaking at a White House press conference, Ratcliffe said the agency used “exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service” possesses to locate the aviator after the F-15 was shot down in Iran.
At the same time, the CIA mounted a deception operation to mislead the Iranians who were looking.
Ratcliffe said the search and rescue operation was “comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”
The CIA declined to respond to questions Monday about the kind of technology used to locate the airman.
The defense secretary said the coordination call held by national security officials during the daring mission to rescue the U.S. airmen lasted nearly two days straight.
“For 45 hours and 56 minutes, we held that call open for coordination,” Hegseth said, describing the call that was held in a secure facility. “Our mission was unblinking.”
Hegseth continued, “The meeting never stopped. The planning never ceased.”
A U.S. aircraft that crashed amid the search for the downed airmen was hit by enemy fire while engaging Iranian forces, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday.
Caine, speaking at a briefing at the White House, said that a U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft was “violently suppressing and engaging the enemy in a close-in gun fight to keep them away” from the pilot of a downed F-15 fighter jet while also being “primarily responsible for communicating with the downed pilot.”
Caine said that after being hit, “this pilot continued to fight, continued the mission, and then upon exit, flew his aircraft into another country and determined that the airplane was not landable.”
The pilot then decided to eject over friendly territory and, according to Caine, “was quickly and safely recovered, and is doing fine.”
The president made the disclosure in response to a reporter’s question.
“Not everybody was on board,” Trump said. He continued: “There were military people that said, ‘You just don’t do this.'”
Referring to Hegseth and Caine, Trump made sure to clarify: “These two were totally on board.”
Asked why Iranians would want him to follow up on his threat to blow up the country’s infrastructure, Trump says everyday citizens are “willing to suffer … in order to have freedom.”
“‘Please keep bombing. Do it,'” Trump claimed U.S. officials have heard Iranians say via “intercepts.”
“And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding,” he said.
He added, “And when we leave and we’re not hitting those areas, they’re saying, ‘Please come back, come back, come back.'”
Trump said the F-15E fighter jet that set off a two-day search-and-rescue operation was downed by a shoulder-launched rocket.
Trump described the weapon as a “hand-held shoulder missile— heat-seeking missile.”
The president went on to suggest that the fighter jet was ultimately downed not by the explosion but because of related damage to the aircraft’s engines.
“They shot it and it got sucked in right by the engine,” Trump said.
Trump says he’s “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes as he continues to threaten the destruction of Iran’s bridges and power plants if they don’t meet a Tuesday evening deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“I hope I don’t have to do it,” Trump added.
The president described the consequences that Iran would face if it didn’t reach a deal with the U.S. by Trump’s 8 p.m. Tuesday deadline.
“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night,” Trump said during his Monday news conference.
Power plants in Iran, he continued, would be “burning, exploding and never to be used again.”
Trump refused to say whether any civilian targets would be off limits in the U.S. response.
The president continued to grumble about NATO allies’ refusal to get involved in reopening the Strait of Hormuz and their hesitance to assist U.S. offensive operations against Iran.
But as he wrapped up his lengthy news conference Monday, he also fumed about the lack of support from Pacific allies.
“You know who else didn’t help us? South Korea didn’t help us,” Trump said. “You know who else didn’t help us? Australia didn’t help us. You know who else didn’t help us? Japan. We’ve got 50,000 soldiers in Japan to protect them from North Korea. We have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong Un, who I get along with very well.”
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By Jon Gambrell, Samy Magdy, Bassem Mroue, Will Weissert, Associated Press
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