Arabic → English transcript

It all began with the crash of an advanced American fighter jet in Iran,

and a pilot missing,

and possibly an opportunity for deception and trickery.

The assessments of the Iranian and American intelligence services indicated that at

least one pilot from the downed aircraft had escaped

to the mountains of southwestern Iran.

This matter quickly shifted the focus of the Iranian

forces toward the southwest of the country.

The presence of Iranian military forces increased. All indicators pointed to

an ongoing search operation, but suddenly everything changed.

Around the afternoon of April 4, the fifteenth of Farvardin, signals appeared,

multiple and scattered points in the rugged highlands.

Signals suggesting that the injured American pilot might be in that area.

Search teams and well- equipped,

ready security forces were dispatched to the heart of the mountains.

Grueling hours on rocky, dangerous roads,

but upon reaching the destination, the truth was revealed. There was no pilot.

All that was found were torn parachutes and devices Abandoned GPS devices.

It was a calculated deception,

perhaps an operation to distract the Iranian military forces,

and it seems that this deception was apparently successful.

While all eyes were fixed on the mountains, night fell.

At around two o’clock after midnight,

the silence of the rural areas was shattered by the sound of attack helicopters.

Similar sounds were heard at several locations.

Local residents hurried to contact the security forces and police to report

unusual sounds,

but this was nothing but a cover. At the same time,

in an area near Mahyar on the outskirts of the city of Shahreza,

the main American operation began at an abandoned airfield.

Two heavy transport planes and two multi- role attack helicopters landed in a dark,

remote plain, an area not far from one of Iran’s sensitive nuclear facilities,

and this is what doubled the importance of the story. The Iranian forces,

with initial capabilities for searching for a pilot and with limited visibility,

moved toward the area. At around four thirty a.m.,

the first teams of Iranian security forces arrived at the landing perimeter,

unaware of the massive equipment and combat power that had descended on the area.

Suddenly, the major attack began.

An Israeli Hermes drone targeted the lead vehicle of the Iranian forces.

An explosion and fire. In those first moments,

a number of Iranian police officers were martyred.

The second vehicle tried to move forward,

but it too came under drone fire.

The survivors quickly got out of the vehicle and barely took cover under the trees

and in the surrounding areas.

But the drone attacks continued, as if they were shielding a major operation.

At the same time, an American helicopter

took off from the ground and opened heavy fire on the area.

The clash began.

With limited capabilities and a heavy weapon mounted on a pickup truck,

they targeted the American aircraft.

Bullets were fired toward the planes, and one of them, a Hercules C- 130,

came under the forces’ fire The Iranian one. The signs were clear,

this was no longer a rescue operation for a pilot.

There were about 200 American special forces soldiers,

and two heavy transport planes loaded with weapons and operational support gear,

and several attack helicopters. Forces scattered on the move, and signs of

a larger covert operation. But the operation was exposed,

and the Iranian military and security forces deployed to the field.

The attacking forces pulled back from completing the operation.

They quickly began to withdraw,

trying to gather the equipment and leave the area.

But an unexpected event occurred for the Americans.

The Hercules planes were not able to take off.

Because of several days of rainfall, the ground was wet and soft.

The wheels sank into the mud,

and the takeoff attempts ended in failure.

Time was running out quickly for the American forces.

In the end, despair seized the American forces about continuing the operation,

and by order from the command center,

they gathered all their forces into one helicopter and a plane One.

The fire from Iranian forces intensified toward the planes and American helicopters.

The attackers’ equipment suffered severe damage.

Finally, one helicopter and a C- 130 plane took off with difficulty.

Both were hit with major damage,

but in the end they managed to get away from the area and leave Iranian airspace.

But the story was not over yet. Minutes later,

an American fighter entered the engagement zone,

where there were signs of a major historic defeat at the operation site.

There were less than two hours left until sunrise and the exposure of the major

American military scandal when the bombing began.

A series of explosions to destroy the remaining wreckage

of the planes and helicopters of the American army that had broken down in Isfahan.

A heavy silence fell on the ground, but the truth remained. The indicators,

the scale of the operation,

and its location all reinforced one single hypothesis.

The main operation was to infiltrate a sensitive center deep inside Iran,

and rescuing the pilot was merely a cover for the original operation which ended in

failure due to a perceptual and intelligence

error by the forces of the United States in identifying the target on the one hand,

and aircraft failure due to unexpected geographical conditions on the other.

An operation that could have changed the equations if it had succeeded,

but its failure paved the way for the withdrawal of America from military

operations and for accepting Iran’s conditions to stop the war.

This is just one part of a story that has not yet been fully told,

and with the passage of time,

the complex dimensions of this operational failure will become clearer.