After the downing of two US fighter jets by Iranian forces, there is yet another echo of the American military intervention in Iraq in 2003 that was later seen as a grave misadventure. There's a direct reason for the comparison this time.
Iran's shooting down of two American aircraft on Friday marked the first time in 23 years that any US fighter jet has been shot down in a conflict. The last time was in Iraq, in 2003, when an A-10 Thunderbolt II was shot down, retired US Air Force Brig Gen Houston Cantwell told news agency AP on Saturday.
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The rare assault after more than two decades shows the Islamic Republic's continued ability to hit back despite President Donald Trump asserting it has been “completely decimated”.
The attacks comes in the sixth week after US and Israeli strikes first hit Iran on February 28, with Trump claiming at different times that Tehran's ability to launch missiles and drones is "dramatically curtailed".
{{/usCountry}}The attacks comes in the sixth week after US and Israeli strikes first hit Iran on February 28, with Trump claiming at different times that Tehran's ability to launch missiles and drones is "dramatically curtailed".
{{/usCountry}}Iran shot down a US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet Friday, with one service member getting rescued and the search still underway for a second, US officials said.
Iranian state media also said a US A-10 attack aircraft crashed after being hit by Iranian defence forces. The pilot managed to eject as this plane fell in Kuwait.
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Over the past 23 years, downing of a US plane was rare because it had largely been fighting insurgents who didn't have the same anti-aircraft capabilities as Iran's mainstream military does, Brig Gen Houston Cantwell said.
But he praised the US prowess for the fact that there have not been more fighter jets lost in Iran. "That is an absolute miracle," said Cantwell, who is now a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, “We're flying combat missions here, they are being shot at every day.”
How Iran downed the planes
The US Central Command said earlier this week that American forces have flown more than 13,000 missions in the Iran war while striking more than 12,300 targets.
But the Iranian military remains a stubborn foe, with its steady stream of strikes against Israel and the Gulf Arab neighbours that house US bases causing regional upheaval and a global economic shock.
That's where a key difference comes in. The US may have more firepower but “there's still a distinction between air superiority and air supremacy”, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran programme senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.
"A disabled air defence system is not a destroyed air defence system," he said. "We shouldn't be shocked that they're still fighting."
As for how the planes were downed, he noted that American jets have been flying missions at lower altitude that makes them more vulnerable to Iran's missiles.
It's possible that Iran fired at the F-15 with a surface-to-air missile, but it's more likely that a portable, shoulder-fired missile was used, he said. Those are much harder to detect.
Mark Cancian, a retired US Marines colonel and now a senior defence adviser with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that a shoulder-fired missile was likely used against the fighter jet.
‘Tremendous success’ nonetheless
He insisted that, despite this, the American-Israeli air war against Iran has been a "tremendous success" so far.
He drew a comparison with World War 2, from around 80 years ago.
The loss rate for American warplanes flying over Germany during WW2 was 3%, which would equal about 350 warplanes in the US war against Iran so far, he calculated.
"But then there's the political side," Cancian said, "The American public is accustomed to fighting bloodless wars. A large part of the country doesn't support the war. So to them, any loss is unacceptable."
Iraq redux
The last time a US jet was shot down in combat was by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile over Baghdad on April 8, 2003. The pilot safely ejected and was rescued, according to the US Air Force.
The Iraq war, which began with overwhelming public support as part of a wider “war on terror” after the September 11, 2001, attack in New York, ended in deep disillusionment.
The invasion was launched in March 2003 with US military might described as “shock and awe”. For Iran 2026, Trump used the words “swift and decisive”.
The US forces achieved their primary objective in Iraq, of ousting Saddam Hussein's regime; but an inquiry commission concluded in 2005 that US intelligence on Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” was completely flawed. US forces have still not been able to completely extricate themselves from Iraq.
Public opinion tracked a disillusionment. By late 2004, a majority of Americans began saying the war was not worth the costs, and by 2007 support had dropped to around a third. Looking back two decades later, 62% of Americans said in a Pew Centre survey said the war had not been worth fighting.
The Trump administration's campaign against Iran in 2026 drew widespread comparisons with Iraq 2003 even before the attack was launched. Analysts pointed to a similar rhetoric of “imminent nuclear threat” and need for a “regime change”.
Vietnam, Afghanistan come to mind
The cautionary tales ahead of the Iran intervention also included Afghanistan 2001, which can be termed America's longest war.
Launched weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the war lasted 20 years of inconclusive fighting and mounting casualties. Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was eventually killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011. When US forces finally left Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban retook Kabul.
The template for what happened was Vietnam of the 1960s, in many ways.
More than 58,000 American service members died in the conflict.
The decisive turn in that proxy war between US and Soviet Russia, backing South and North Vietnam, came in 1968, after simultaneous attacks by Communist forces across South Vietnam.
Iran has mentioned that the war now could end up being Vietnam 2.0 for Trump's America. For now, the downing of the US planes reminds of Iraq. A ground invasion, if carried out, is likely to bring earlier wars more squarely into focus.
(inputs from Reuters, AP)