TOI correspondent from Washington: The loss of at least six US planes in the war on Iran and the uncertain fate of a missing American pilot has quickly evolved from a battlefield incident into a defining political test for President Donald Trump, who has built his brand on deriding the foreign policy failures of his predecessors and projecting an image of himself as an invincible leader.
As Pentagon officials confirm that a high-risk rescue operation is underway deep inside hostile Iranian territory, the stakes now extend far beyond the recovery of a single airman. For Trump, who has repeatedly cast himself as the antithesis of what he calls America’s “weak” leadership past, the mission carries symbolic weight that could either validate or puncture his long-cultivated aura of derring-do and dominance.
