Ben Shapiro

After dark, senior military officials waited, and then they launched.

Special operations helicopters loaded with commandos raced to the remote mountain site where he was waiting.

A senior U.S.

official says this is the most challenging and complex operation

in the history of special operations, because they had to do this in the mountains, they had to assume that Iranian forces would rush to attack them, and they didn't know how healthy or unhealthy the weapons systems officer was.

As the commandos apparently landed on the objective, according to the New York Times, US and Israeli warplanes dropped bombs, whose bright orange blast lit up the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains.

So the wounded airmen,

was then rushed to a helicopter and whisked him off to this jerry-rigged airstrip inside Iran.

Special operations forces had built this kind of tiny airstrip in the middle of Iran for possible rescues or other contingencies.

And the plan was to load him and all the rescue force onto two C-130 aircraft.

to get them out of danger and out to Kuwait.

But final twist of fate, it turns out the nose gear of at least one and possibly both of those planes got stuck in the sandy dirt at the airstrip.

Three smaller planes then landed carrying specialized teams and they made their way to the remote staging area.

And according to the New York Times, the commandos and the injured weapons system operator were reloaded

onto three newly arrived replacement aircraft.

After the rescue team left, American warplanes bombed the two disabled planes rather than letting them fall into Iranian hands.

So there went two of our some 600 C-130s

So we blew those up and the Iranians immediately took footage of this and said, look what we did.

Look what we were capable of.

OK, let me explain how dominant U.S.