Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Apr 4, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Searches for Missing Airman as Israel Launches Fresh Strikes on Tehran
Iran downed an F-15E, the first U.S. warplane the country has shot down in the war. In southwest Iran, one person was killed when a projectile struck the perimeter of a nuclear power plant, Iranian media reported.
Eric SchmittHelene CooperYeganeh Torbati and John Yoon
Here’s the latest
The U.S. military was racing on Saturday to find an American airman who bailed out of a fighter jet that was shot down over Iran, as Israel launched a heavy wave of airstrikes on Tehran, shaking homes and leaving residents desperately seeking shelter.
One member of the two-person crew of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet was rescued after it was destroyed, according to U.S. officials. Iranian forces were also pursuing the missing American, Iranian officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing operations. The status of the airman was unknown as of midday Saturday.
It was the first time American personnel and combat aircraft have been downed by Iranian forces in the five weeks of war. On Friday, a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was hit by ground fire and a second U.S. military jet crashed near the Strait of Hormuz, the critical Persian Gulf waterway, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
The loss of the jets and the rescue efforts have presented military and diplomatic challenges for the United States — ones that would be compounded if the missing American were taken prisoner.
President Trump has said the war was likely to continue for weeks. He told NBC News that the missing airman would not affect efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to end the war.
At least one person was killed when a projectile struck the perimeter of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in southwest Iran on Saturday, according to the semiofficial Iranian Tasnim news agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had formally notified them of the episode but that no increase in radiation levels had been reported. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.
Israeli warplanes attacked Tehran on Friday night in what residents called some of the heaviest hours of bombardment since the conflict began. The Israeli military said it was striking Iranian aerial defense and ballistic missile sites in and around the capital.
The downing of the jet has underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. Iran has continued to launch ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and Arab states across the Middle East, defying U.S.-Israeli efforts to degrade their capabilities.
Mr. Trump had said on Wednesday that Iran had “no antiaircraft equipment” and that its radar had been “100 percent annihilated” in the intense U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign.
The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, taunted the U.S. in a post on social media, writing on Friday: “This brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’”
Here’s what else we’re covering:
The downed jet: The American plane shot down over Iran on Friday was an F-15E Strike Eagle and has been essential in the U.S. air war over Iran because of its ability to fly long distances and carry a large amount of munitions. Read more ›
Iranian missiles: After its underground missile bunkers and silos are bombed, Iran digs them out and returns them to operation within hours, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Despite the U.S.-Israeli campaign, Iran still possesses powerful military capabilities. Read more ›
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,607 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Friday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Thursday said at least 1,345 Lebanese had been killed since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 17 people had been killed as of Friday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.
April 4, 2026, 9:25 a.m. ET19 minutes ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
In southern Lebanon, several civilians were killed and more were injured in the city of Tyre on Saturday as Israel issued new warnings for neighborhoods in the city and its suburbs, Lebanon’s national news agency said. The city’s Lebanese Italian Hospital, a critical medical facility, continues to operate despite Israeli strikes that have hit nearby buildings, the news agency reported, citing the hospital director. Israel’s large-scale evacuation warnings for Tyre have caused mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
April 4, 2026, 9:24 a.m. ET20 minutes ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
A projectile hit near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, killing a worker.
A strike hit near Iran’s only working nuclear power plant on Saturday, the Iranian nuclear authorities said, the latest in a series of attacks near the site that have heightened fears of a nuclear accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday that it had been informed by Iran that a “projectile struck close to the premises” of the plant in Bushehr, killing one security worker and damaging an unspecified building on the site.
The agency said that the structure was “affected by shock waves and fragments” but that there was no reported increase in radiation levels.
The Israeli military and U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the region, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
President Trump has threatened to destroy power plants and other infrastructure in Iran if its leaders do not agree to a peace deal and end their military’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil exports. Israel has already carried out strikes on nuclear-linked sites, like a heavy-water plant in central Iran, and on energy infrastructure such as fuel depots.
The strike near Bushehr on Saturday was the fourth attack in recent weeks to impact the nuclear plant, a coastal facility on the Persian Gulf that Russia helped build and still helps operate.
“Israel-U.S. have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on social media on Saturday. He sought to highlight the risks of a radioactive incident at the plant to Arab Gulf states, many of which are closer to the facility than Tehran, Iran’s capital.
“Radioactive fallout will end life in GCC capitals, not Tehran,” Mr. Araghchi said, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional alliance that includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Elsewhere, U.S.-Israeli strikes on Saturday hit a major petrochemical complex in southwestern Iran, wounding at least five people, according to Iranian state media.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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Where Iranian officials said they were searching for American fighter jet crew member
300 mi.
500 km.
The New York Times
April 4, 2026, 8:04 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel has not said publicly what it is doing to help locate the missing American airman whose jet was shot down over Iran. An Israeli official, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive plans, said Israel’s military had suspended attacks in the area where the airman was believed to have been lost and was sharing relevant intelligence with the Americans. The official did not say whether Israel’s operations were limited to those actions.
April 4, 2026, 8:02 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
Air-raid sirens blared in central Israel on Saturday, warning of incoming missile fire. The Israeli military said the attack was from Iran, which has been firing several volleys a day at Israel for more than a month. Four people were lightly wounded, according to the Israeli ambulance service. Images distributed by the service showed emergency workers approaching homes damaged in the attack. At least 17 people have been killed in the country, mostly by Iranian missiles, according to the Israeli authorities.
April 4, 2026, 7:43 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Dubai
The United Arab Emirates intercepted 23 ballistic missiles and 56 drones coming from Iran in the 24 hours, according to a defense ministry statement on Saturday.
April 4, 2026, 7:41 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
Iran’s foreign minister addressed on Saturday diplomatic efforts to end the war, saying Tehran had never refused to go to Pakistan, which has been leading mediation efforts. “What we care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed on us,” the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in a post on social media. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have recently assessed that Iran is not currently willing to engage in substantive negotiations to end the war due to deep mistrust of the United States and Israel, which attacked the country twice while talks over its nuclear program were ongoing.
April 4, 2026, 6:51 a.m. ET3 hours ago
news analysis
Missing airman raises concerns that Iran could gain leverage over the U.S.
The downing of a U.S. fighter jet over Iranian territory and the intense search for one of its crew members has raised concerns that the airman could be captured and provide Iran with a potent asset that it could use for leverage against the United States.
The rescue operation for the missing airman was in its second day on Saturday, with not only American troops conducting an all-out search but the Iranian military also trying to find the crew member, according to three Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
In one indication of Iran’s eagerness to find the airman, an anchor for a local affiliate of Iran’s state broadcaster read a statement on Friday on television calling on residents to capture the “enemy’s pilot or pilots” and turn them over alive to security forces for a reward.
The possibility that Iran could capture the airman raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, a traumatizing event in American history that laid the foundation for nearly five decades of hostile U.S.-Iranian relations.
The crisis, in which militant students took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and kept 52 Americans captive for 444 days, set a template for Iran that it would perfect in the coming decades as a way to capture global headlines, inflict pain on its adversaries and extract concessions.
Since 1979, Iran’s government has repeatedly used hostage-taking as a tactic against its adversaries. It has detained Americans, Europeans and other foreign citizens, sometimes imprisoning them for years before releasing them, often in exchange for cash or the release of its own citizens imprisoned abroad. It has used hostages as propaganda tools and to establish leverage.
The 1979 crisis came to define the final year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and served for many as a symbol of his failures.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized Mr. Carter’s handling of the hostage crisis, calling it “pathetic.”
In 1980, he told a journalist, “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don’t think they’d do it with other countries.”
Hamidreza Azizi, an expert on Iranian security issues at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a research organization, said Iran could take one of two tacks if it manages to capture the airman.
If the capture remains secret, the Iranians could approach the United States privately and cut a behind-the-scenes deal, demanding concessions in exchange for the crew member’s secret release. Or Iran could parade the airman in front of the cameras as propaganda.
That, he said, was the more likely strategy. “They really do want to present this image of victory and also to humiliate Trump,” Mr. Azizi said.
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, pointed to a 2007 incident in which Iran captured British sailors, saying their vessels had trespassed in Iranian waters. The sailors were blindfolded, threatened and subjected to psychological pressure before giving videotaped statements in which they seemed to apologize. But there was no report of physical harm to them, Mr. Alfoneh noted.
“Then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad maximized international media coverage as he announced their release, and personally shook their hands,” Mr. Alfoneh said in an email. He added that the treatment of the American airman would likely be different, given that the United States and Iran are at war.
Even if the missing crew member is brought to safety, the episode underscores the risks of conducting missions over hostile territory against an adversary with the ability to retaliate. Rescue operations are inherently dangerous because additional American service members are put at risk.
A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter involved in the search was hit by ground fire on Friday but escaped safely. And a second combat plane, an A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The pilot in that plane was rescued.
Iranian officials, and even pro-government commentators, have said little so far about the missing crew member and what their fate might be if they fell into Iranian hands. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament and a powerful member of Iran’s political establishment, taunted the United States on Friday on X.
“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?’” Mr. Ghalibaf wrote. “Wow. What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.”
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April 4, 2026, 6:46 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Turkey’s transport minister told local media on Saturday that two of the 15 ships owned by Turkish companies that had been waiting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began had transited through. In mid-March, Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu announced that the first ship had passed through, but on Saturday he did not specify when the second ship had done so.
April 4, 2026, 5:56 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed on Saturday that Iran had informed it of a projectile strike near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in southwest Iran. No increase in radiation levels has been reported, the agency said. The agency’s director, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in a social media post that he was deeply concerned about the incident and emphasized that nuclear power plants and surrounding areas must never be attacked to avoid nuclear accidents.
April 4, 2026, 5:27 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Reporting from Dubai
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy arrived in Qatar on an unannounced trip, a day after she visited Saudi Arabia and met with the kingdom’s de-facto leader. Her trip marks the first time a leader of a European Union or NATO country has visited the Persian Gulf since the war began on February 28.
Italy is highly dependent on energy imports. Meloni’s government said Friday that it was extending cuts in fuel excise taxes amid the global energy crisis.
April 4, 2026, 4:56 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Leily Nikounazar
At least one person was killed when a projectile struck the perimeter of a nuclear power plant in southwest Iran, the country’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The explosion damaged one of auxiliary buildings of the plant, the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, but did not affect operations or damage the main section of the facility, the agency said.
April 4, 2026, 4:43 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
Three U.N. peacekeepers from Indonesia were the officers injured in an explosion in southern Lebanon on Friday, the Indonesian government said. Days earlier, three Indonesian peacekeepers were killed in southern Lebanon. Several other personnel with United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have been killed or injured since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began in early March.
April 4, 2026, 4:29 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Leily Nikounazar
Several explosions were heard on Saturday at the Mahshahr Special Petrochemical Zone, a major oil industry hub in southwestern Iran, state media and semi-official news agencies in Iran reported. At least five injuries were reported, the outlets said.
April 4, 2026, 2:32 a.m. ET7 hours ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
The Israeli military said Saturday that it had conducted a wave of airstrikes in the Iranian capital of Tehran, including against air defense sites and a ballistic missile storage facility outside of the city on Friday. The United States and Israel have both bombed missile and drone sites in an effort to degrade Iran’s fighting capabilities. U.S. intelligence reports have suggested that this goal has not yet been achieved.
April 4, 2026, 2:01 a.m. ET8 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
Multiple explosions were heard across Beirut on Saturday morning after Israel said it had launched a new round of strikes against Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital. Lebanon’s national news agency said the targets were in Dahiya, the southern suburbs where the Iran-backed militia holds sway. There were Israeli strikes elsewhere in the country overnight, the agency said, and one attack injured at least 10 people in Maarka, a town in Tyre district.