Officials close to Trump were afraid of how the president’s impatience could sabotage their Iran rescue operation, reports claim
Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump was locked out of key situation room meetings during his war on Iran over fears that the president’s temperament could ruin a complicated mission to save an American soldier, it has been reported.
Reports released this week have lifted the lid on the operation to extract a Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) from Iran’s remote Zagros Mountains after their F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, April 3.
The pilot of the F-15E was recovered just a matter of hours after he was forced to eject from his fighter jet, yet his missing WSO was not so lucky. With Iranian forces closing in on their location, President Trump is claimed to have flown into a paranoid rage.
Reports in the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous senior administration officials with knowledge of the search-and-rescue mission, claimed that Trump ‘screamed at aides for hours’ after learning that the two airmen faced capture by the Iranians.
This was, reportedly, because of a pivotal historical event that happened in his lifetime, the 1979 Iran Hostage crisis. This blunder saw an unpopular president’s poll numbers turn nuclear, leading to Ronald Reagan sweeping the board with a 44-state wipeout in 1980.
“If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter…with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election,” Trump is reported as saying, adding: “What a mess.”
The Commander-in-Chief is said to have immediately ordered a ground invasion of Iran to recover the two downed airmen, fearing how the war could shift if the remnants of Tehran’s government paraded two captured US soldiers in front of its war weary citizenry.
Ironically, this would have led the first deployment of US forces on Iranian soil since the Iranian revolution and ensuing capture of American embassy staff. Yet with the rescue of two Air Force personnel hanging in the balance, the WSJ claims that the adults in the room stepped in.
This meant senior administration officials like Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance stepping into the situation room over the ensuing critical 24-hour period of the rescue mission, April 4.
In the mean time, the elected President of the United States had been relegated to receiving updates about the mission ‘at meaningful moments’.
One unnamed official explained to the publication: “Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful.”
But although Trump was ‘locked out’ of the situation room out of fear that he could jeopardize the operation, his worry about the consequences of Iran getting its hands on American soldiers had kept him up late into the night.
As news came through that the CIA had located the missing WSO at around 2am, which was apparently assisted using an undisclosed advanced piece of agency technology, the president finally went to bed.
However his fury at the Iranian regime was unabated by the WSO’s unbelievable rescue from a remote mountainside, in a vast operation that used more than 150 aircraft, with Trump weighing in on the conflict the next day, April 5.
In probably the most expletive public message by an American leader, following the stress of the rescue operation, Trump told Iran’s leaders: “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”