The video is grainy, shot from the ground near Chabahar — a port city on Iran’s remote eastern coast. A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet screams low overhead, its 20mm cannon blazing. Then a streak of smoke rises from below. The aircraft breaks hard left. The warhead detonates behind it. The jet flies on.
For several tense hours on March 25, 2026, the world debated whether the United States had just lost a fighter jet over Iran. The answer was no — but the close call was real, and the video proved it.
Iran Claimed a Kill. CENTCOM Said Otherwise.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moved fast. Before the smoke had cleared, IRGC state media announced that the F/A-18 had been “accurately hit” using new advanced air defense systems and had subsequently crashed into the Indian Ocean. The claim went viral across Middle Eastern media within minutes.
U.S. Central Command fired back just as quickly. “No U.S. fighter aircraft have been shot down by Iran,” CENTCOM posted on X — directly contradicting the IRGC account. Open-source analysts at GeoConfirmed pinned the footage to coordinates in Chabahar’s port district and walked through it frame by frame: the missile detonated in the jet’s wake. The Super Hornet kept flying.
The IRGC’s kill claim was false. But the underlying event — an Iranian man-portable surface-to-air missile coming within metres of a U.S. Navy fighter — was not.
The Longest Reach of Operation Epic Fury
Chabahar sits at the far eastern edge of Iran, almost on the Pakistani border. The fact that U.S. aircraft are conducting low-level strafing runs there — well outside the Persian Gulf — shows just how broadly Operation Epic Fury has extended American air power across Iranian territory.
It also reveals a threat the Pentagon has been quieter about: Iranian MANPADS. These are not the sophisticated S-300 batteries that U.S. planners spent years preparing to suppress. They are small, mobile, shoulder-fired weapons — the kind a single IRGC soldier can carry into a port, a rooftop, or a fishing village. No radar warning. No electronic countermeasure will reliably detect them before the trigger is pulled.
The Super Hornet pilot appears to have reacted instinctively — or perhaps caught the missile’s launch signature just in time. Either way, it was very close.
The Threat Is Not Gone
Iran’s large fixed air defense networks have taken severe damage since Epic Fury began. But this incident is proof that the threat has not been erased. MANPADS are nearly impossible to pre-empt. They are everywhere. And the men holding them are still watching the sky.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking the same day, described “growing energy” in diplomatic channels and hinted at progress. Until a deal is struck, U.S. pilots are flying — and ducking.
Sources: The War Zone; U.S. Central Command; GeoConfirmed; Bellingcat
