Iran war latest: One pilot rescued after US fighter jet downed over Iran

"He is frankly all over the place on a war he chose," US correspondent Mark Stone says, referring to Donald Trump.

Stone analyses the sequence of events that undermined what the US president and his team have been saying about the war.

By David Blevins, US correspondent

"There is nothing normal about this…" 

Words spoken from the furthest humanity has gone in half a century.

In their first live broadcast, Commander Reid Wiseman and his fellow astronauts on the Artemis II mission described their view of Earth as "spectacular".

From outer space, they watched the polarising politics of their home planet fade into the distance.

But reflecting on the past week, it could equally be said of the White House under Donald Trump: there is nothing normal about this.

Monday brought debate about potential war crimes, Trump having threatened to bomb Iran's power and water desalination plants.

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US always operated within the law "but" would continue to pursue its objectives "unabated".

By Tuesday, he was threatening to pull the US out of NATO, again, and singling out the UK, in particular.

"Go get your own oil!" he blasted on Truth Social.

An insult juxtaposed with confirmation that the King and Queen's state visit to the US will go ahead as scheduled this month.

The insults continued on Wednesday, Trump mocking Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron during an Easter reception.

He depicted them as weak, while his spiritual adviser, Paula White, depicted him as Christ-like.

"You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us," she said.

"They call me king now. Can you believe it?" Trump interjected, while reading about Palm Sunday.

A few hours later, he was delivering the most vague presidential address to the nation in living memory.

Heavily billed as "an important update on the war", it brought more confusion than clarity.

A quiet Maundy Thursday? Not a chance. That turned out to be Attorney General Pam Bondi's last supper.

The president fired another high-profile woman from his cabinet, this one over her handling of the Epstein files, and for not pursuing his opponents more aggressively.

On Friday, the US lost an F-15 fighter jet to Iranian fire, one of the two crew quickly plucked to safety.

During efforts to find the second, a second US plane and two US Blackhawk helicopters were also hit.

A daring search and rescue mission in enemy territory, in the shadow of a daring lunar mission that has captivated humanity.

Watch: Second US aircraft struck by Iran

Christina Koch, the first woman in history to travel around the moon as part of the Artemis II mission, described seeing all of planet Earth through "one single pane".

An "absolutely phenomenal" view, she said.

From tens of thousands of miles away, the planet is a fragile luminous sphere without borders, where human quarrels seem small.

But in the context of an unconventional White House, the potential for a much larger war in the Middle East looms large.

The one drawback of flying to the moon is that you might not want to come back again.

The Speaker of Iran's parliament has mocked the ongoing US search for a pilot after one of its F-15 jets was shot down.

"After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from 'regime change' to 'hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?'," Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on social media.

He appeared to be referring to the US rhetoric throughout the war, with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth insisting Iran has been "obliterated".

"We've set them back 15-20 years," Trump said earlier this week. 

"They have no navy, no military, no air force."

The White House has told the press that Donald Trump won't be making any appearances in front of the media for the rest of the day.

It comes hours earlier than the usual memo from the White House, with the US president tight-lipped as the search and rescue operation is ongoing in Iran.

As we've been reporting, the search is still taking place to find one of the two pilots after an F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran. The other pilot has been rescued alive.

Trump told our US partner network NBC News that the shooting down of an American jet won't affect negotiations.

Israel's military has said it identified a launch carried out by Hezbollah that landed inside a UNIFIL force post in southern Lebanon earlier today.

Three UN personnel were injured, two of them severely, Israel Defence Forces said.

"A review of the launch trajectory clearly indicates that the fire was carried out by Hezbollah," the IDF statement added.

Created by the UN Security Council in 1978, UNIFIL has served as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon.

A second US aircraft has been struck by Iranian fire after a jet was downed earlier today, an official told our US partner network NBC News.

After Iran struck down the F-15, a single-pilot aircraft that was mobilised to support the search and rescue mission was also struck by Iranian fire. 

That single-pilot aircraft was an A-10 Thunderbolt, known as a Warthog, the official said.

The A-10 made it to Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the aircraft crashed, the official said. The pilot is safe and the A-10 is down in Kuwait, according to the official.

Iran also hit two UH 60 Blackhawk helicopters involved in the search and rescue, and the official said there were minor injuries to service members from that strike but all of them are safe.

In total, Iran has caused two military aircraft to crash - the F-15 and the A-10 - and hit two Blackhawk helicopters in a single day, less than 48 hours after Donald Trump said in his primetime address that Iran has been "completely decimated".

Donald Trump is being briefed by his national security team in the West Wing as search operations are ongoing, a senior White House official has told our US partner network NBC News.

The president has been working in the Oval Office or the adjacent Oval dining room since the morning, receiving frequent updates on the operation in Iran.

As we've been reporting, the search is still taking place to find one of the two pilots after an F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran.

The other pilot has been rescued alive.

The downing of a US plane doesn't play well with the narrative from Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, a professor of diplomacy and strategy has said.

Speaking to presenter Jonathan Samuels, Dr Dan Plesch said "this shouldn't be happening according to the line we're getting from the White House".

"The Iranian regional government appears to be functioning, making announcements, the television appears to be functioning, and most importantly, their air defence appears to have succeeded in shooting down an American jet," he said. 

"None of these things should be happening in a country which we're told is being bombed back into the Stone Age."

Two US military helicopters that were involved in the F-15 search and rescue efforts were struck by Iranian fire, a US official has told our partner network NBC News.

All service members on the helicopters are safe, the official added.

Two helicopters can be seen in this footage, which appears to show the US rescue mission in Iran.