The Washington Post reports:

President Donald Trump has continued to describe the war against Iran as an unqualified success, saying as recently as Monday that the United States was doing “unbelievably well,” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tehran had been “embarrassed and humiliated” by U.S. forces.

But Iran’s downing of an F-15E fighter jet and the high-risk rescue operation that ensued showed that Tehran retains the ability to threaten the United States’ military personnel and cast doubt on the statistics Hegseth has promoted in recent weeks, boasting about “complete control of Iranian skies” and “uncontested airspace,” U.S. officials and analysts said.

The chaotic but successful rescue mission has become the clearest indication yet that Hegseth’s repeated claims of air dominance come with serious caveats, and has reinforced concerns inside the Trump administration that his messaging about the war is overly optimistic and risks misinforming both the public and the president.

“Pete is not speaking truth to the president,” one administration official said. “As a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information.”

Though Hegseth has claimed for weeks that Iran has “no air defenses” and could do “nothing” about U.S. air incursions, Trump acknowledged during his White House news conference Monday that a shoulder-fired “heat-seeking missile” downed the F-15 that left two U.S. airmen temporarily stranded deep inside Iranian territory.

“He got lucky. It was a lucky hit,” Trump said.

Iran also shot down an A-10 attack plane Friday, though the pilot of that aircraft managed to fly it back to friendly airspace before ejecting safely, officials said.

Kelly Grieco, a military analyst at the Stimson Center, said that while the Trump administration has significantly degraded Iran’s navy, air force, and fixed missile and radar targets, the F-15’s downing is what happens “when you have air superiority but don’t have air supremacy.”

“Our air superiority is limited geographically to the west and to south but also in terms altitude,” she added, noting that U.S. planes probably have been flying above 15,000 or even 30,000 feet to avoid the type of shoulder-fired rockets that hit the F-15 on Friday.

Hegseth’s triumphant rhetoric has stood in contrast to that of Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has not suggested U.S. pilots can use Iranian airspace without concern of enemy threats. [Continue reading…]