Tehran (AFP) - Iranian and American forces raced each other Saturday to recover a crew member from the first US fighter jet to go down inside Iran since the start of the war.

Tehran said it had shot down the F-15 warplane and US media reported United States special forces had rescued one of its two crew members, with the other was still missing.

Iran’s military also said it downed a US A-10 ground attack aircraft in the Gulf, with US media saying the pilot of that plane was rescued.

The war erupted more than a month ago with US-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei, triggering retaliation that spread the conflict throughout the Middle East, convulsing the global economy and impacting millions of people worldwide.

US Central Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the loss of the F-15, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The president has been briefed.”

President Donald Trump told NBC the F-15 loss would not affect negotiations with Iran, saying: “No, not at all. No, it’s war.”

On Saturday, there were fresh strikes on Israel, Lebanon and Iran, as well as on Gulf states.

An AFP journalist saw a thick haze of grey smoke covering Tehran’s skyline after hearing several blasts over the capital. It was not immediately clear what had been targeted.

- ‘Valuable reward’ -

A spokesperson for the Iranian military’s central operational command earlier said “an American hostile fighter jet in central Iranian airspace was struck and destroyed by the IRGC Aerospace Force’s advanced air defence system”.

“The jet was completely obliterated, and further searches are ongoing.”

An Iranian television reporter on a local official channel said anyone who captured a crew member alive would “receive a valuable reward”.

Retired US brigadier general Houston Cantwell, who has 400 hours of combat flight experience, said a pilot’s training would likely kick in before he or she parachutes to the ground.

“My priority would be, first of all, concealment, because I don’t want to be captured,” he told AFP.

Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, mocked the Trump administration.

He wrote 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?’

“Wow. What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.”

- Strikes on infrastructure -

Strikes by all sides have increasingly targeted economic and industrial sites, raising fears of wider disruption to global energy supplies.

US-Israeli strikes on Saturday targeted a petrochemicals hub in southwestern Iran, wounding five people, Iranian media reported.

State media also reported a strike near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant that killed a guard at the facility.

Writing in the US journal Foreign Affairs, Iran’s former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Tehran should make a deal with Washington to end the war by offering to curb its nuclear programme and reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran has virtually blocked the key waterway since the war began, where one-fifth of the world’s crude oil and natural gas normally passes.

Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned that Iran would increase its own attacks on energy sites in the region in response to threats from Trump of attacks on infrastructure.

A drone attack on a refinery owned by Kuwait’s national oil company on Friday sparked fires, while a separate Iranian attack damaged a power and desalination complex.

Gulf states once seen as safe havens are now under threat, accused by Iran of serving as launchpads for US strikes.

Shrapnel from intercepted drones injured four people in Bahrain on Saturday.

Separately, two buildings in Dubai were hit by debris, including one housing the US cloud computing firm Oracle, authorities in the United Arab Emirates said.

- Beirut explosions -

The Israeli military said Friday it had struck more than 3,500 targets across Lebanon in the month since fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah began.

Lebanese state media reported that Israel destroyed a bridge in the Bekaa region, and local media said a second bridge was also hit, after Israel said it would strike them.

An AFP journalist heard two loud explosions in Beirut within half an hour early Saturday and saw smoke billowing from one of them.

AFP journalists saw gutted buildings near the coastal Lebanese city of Tyre and in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Friday that 1,368 people had been killed since the start of the war.

Hezbollah has not announced its losses.

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