April 7, 2026 • 13 mins
On this episode of Wellness Unmasked, Dr. Nicole Saphier breaks down the extraordinary U.S. military rescue mission in Iran that saved multiple downed pilots against incredible odds.
After a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle and A-10 aircraft were shot down, a massive 45-hour search-and-rescue operation involving special forces, advanced technology, and coordinated military strategy successfully brought all personnel home alive—despite serious injuries and active combat conditions.
From a medical perspective, Dr. Saphier explains what really happens to the human body during ejection, including extreme G-forces, spinal trauma, landing injuries, dehydration, and hypothermia risks. She also highlights the remarkable physical and mental resilience required to survive such conditions—and why overall health and fitness remain critical for military readiness.
Plus, a broader conversation on America’s health crisis, military standards, and the importance of strengthening the nation’s physical well-being.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Wellness un Mass. I'm doctor Nicole Safire, and
today we're going to talk about the incredible rescue mission
that happened in Iran over the weekend. Why are we
talking about this on a wellness podcast, you may ask, Well,
if you haven't been paying attention, this has been one
of the most incredible rescue missions, and from a medical standpoint,
it is awe inspiring that while we know that there
(00:26):
are injuries, there were no fatalities. So let me just
recap for anybody who have watched the news over the
last weekend. On April third, you know, a couple days
before Easter, USF fifteen E Strike Eagle, which is type
of plane, was shot down over a run. Both crew
members on board, the pilot and the weapons system officer,
(00:49):
had to eject themselves and what we knew were we
had to then go in to get them. A second aircraft,
in A ten, was also down the same day that
pilot ejected himself and was part of a separate rescue
mission that got a little bit less fanfare. Now, a
massive search and rescue mission went on over the course
(01:11):
of the next like forty five hours, like one hundred
and seventy six aircraft were involved. One hundred to two
hundred special operations personnel. This included Seal Team six, Delta Force,
Army Rangers, drones, electronic warfare DiiA. I don't even know.
I'm sure they can't even tell us everyone who was
involved in this. But there was electronic jamming, fake intelligence,
(01:35):
diversion flights, anything to just throw Iran off course. Because
you have to imagine we are now in war with Iran,
so Iran wanted to find our downed pilots and weapons
officers just as much as we did. They had very
different intentions as us in finding them, but they certainly
were on the search as well. What do we know.
(01:56):
The pilot was rescued first, but then that massive hunt
went on for the weapons specialty officer. So here's what
we know now about what happened. We have gotten some
statements from the White House. After forty five hours they
found the weapons officer. He had climbed up to a
mountaintop ridge and was hiding there and he was also
(02:18):
emitting an electronic beacon and that's how they were able
to find him. Now, the statements from the White House
is that people that were found they are alive. There
were no fatalities. There were some injuries, they have not
been specific on the injuries. We also had some fighting
on the ground. Military helicopter took fire, and of everyone
(02:39):
who ejected, anyone on the ground, anyone in that military helicopter,
there were no fatalities. Absolutely incredible in the time of war.
When we talk about fatalities, sometimes we forget that these
are human lives that we're talking about. But it was
an Eastern miracle, if you will, that there were no
fatalities reported with this rescue mission. Now I want to
(03:01):
talk to you about why there still can be severe
injuries even if everything went right when it came to
the pilot and the weapons officer ejecting, so the words
that were described were that there were seriously wounded, but
he survived and he was able to climb seven thousand
feet upper ridge and hid in a crevice of this
(03:22):
mountainous ridge for hours. So what happens when a pilot
ejects themselves from a plane. Let's think about this. Think
about a car accident when you're going fifty sixty miles
per hour and then all of a sudden you go
to a stop. The body is not necessarily made to
handle that sort of rapid acceleration deceleration movement. That's why
(03:42):
you can have severe injury, including from the mildest form,
just a mild form of whiplash when your head goes
forward and then back. Because the spine is flexible, it's
made up of many different joints and it's supposed to move.
And so if you are now going in significantly fast
start in an airplane, then you have to eject yourselves.
(04:03):
Now you're going from you're going straight, and then you
go straight up at a ninety degree angle. That's another
kind of acceleration change that the body is just not
equipped for. And that acceleration going up as you eject,
I think it can be anywhere from like twelve to
thirteen g's worth of force that is being ejected out,
So that pressure on the body, specifically on the spine,
(04:26):
the spinal vertebrae, which are these little rectangular bones that
make up the spine. They can be crushed by the
weight of this powerful force as you're being ejected out,
and you could also have like a severe whiplash in
terms of ligament injuries that are responsible for holding that
spine straight. So spinal injuries. Unfortunately, anywhere from thirty to
(04:47):
fifty percent of people who eject from these planes can
get some Now, not all spinal injuries are created equally.
You can have mild injuries that can result in pain
and maybe just a brace for a few weeks or months,
but you can also have severe spinal injuries that can
leave someone paralyzed or even dead. The good news is
(05:08):
we know that the pilot was able to climb seven
thousand feet to get to that mountaintop ridge, so the
chance of him being paralyzed, in my opinion, would be
exceedingly low, but the chance of him having some sort
of spinal injury is likely very high. Also, upon ejection,
the arms of the legs can get stuck or can
(05:28):
hit something on the way out, so you can have
some sort of extremity issue, and that happens about twenty
five percent of the time and thankfully less common now
that the pilots wear helmets. You can have total brain injury,
and this happens in less than ten percent of cases.
So these are all just upon ejecting out of the plane.
Now we have to worry about them coming down the
(05:48):
landing injuries. As you know, after they eject, they have
now a parachute. But that parachute again, even when it's
working in all its glory, you can still hit the
ground another deceleration injury very fast, and we see it
all the time people who go skydiving, which is why
I yelled to my kids, please don't ever jump out
of a plane voluntarily unless you're saving people. But you
(06:12):
can have you land on the ground and it can
crush the bones of your legs and of your pelvis
if you land too fast or you land at the
wrong angle. So also highly likely that maybe he had
some lower extremity injury, which would make climbing up that
ridge very difficult. But when you are in that fight
or flight moment, when you have your adrenaline and your
(06:33):
cortisol and all the other stress hormones, your body perceives
pain less because it wants you to survive. So you
see people walking on broken legs, ankles, dislocated whatever, because
and not feel not be inhibited by pain because they
have all of these stress hormones. Once he got safely
(06:54):
to that mountaintop and he found himself cover, I would
imagine that some of that pain and likely set in
and now we have to worry about the fact that
the temperatures were dipping into the thirties at night, and
now while that is cold and can get below freezing,
hypothermia tends to set in at lower temperatures. But because
(07:15):
he is injured, because he is stressed and he was
perspirating or sweating, he is more vulnerable to hypothermia injuries
as well. We also have to worry about dehydrating, seeing
as I doubt that he remembered to grab his water
bottle upon dejection when he was ejecting for his life.
So we also worry about altitude sickness being that high
(07:39):
up in the mountains, so his medical care is likely
going to be multifaceted, multi layered. But the fact that
he was able to climb up the ridge seven thousand feet,
he had the mental clarity to get there to send
that electronic beacon gives me hope that you know that
he will be okay and he is getting the best
medical care possible. These brave men and women who go
(08:03):
out to defend not only our nation but people all
across the globe. They are to be praised. It is
incredible what this person and everyone who was involved in
this mission went through, and you know, Secretary of War
heag Seth, you know, takes a lot of heat when
he talks about we need the best of the best
in the military, and he talks about some of the
(08:25):
past policies where unfortunately the health of our nation has
made military recruitment very difficult because not a lot of
people can pass the physical benchmarks that are set because
we are a nation of chronic illness and obesity. And
instead of lowering the bar to who should be in
(08:46):
the military, Secretary Hegseth is like, no, not only should
we not maintain but we need to raise the bar
because we need the most mentally and physically strong who
are going to be able to be put into these
positions like these were in this time of war. Who
are going to be able to have the physical and
mental fortitude to get themselves to that ridge. We can't
(09:09):
lower the bar. We can't say, all right, well, you
know America is obese, so I guess we should now
just allow obese people into the military into these combat situations. No,
we need to do what we can to get Americans
healthy so that we can have the strongest people in
our military who are defending our freedom. That's my opinion.
I hate when I hear people say, well, we just
(09:31):
need to lower the bar to the new status quo
of America's health, and I don't think that's true. I
think we need to take a long, hard look at
the health of our nation and make sure that Americans
have access to affordable food, physical activity. And that's a
lot of what make America Healthy Again is doing right now.
You can be a critic of it. Absolutely. I don't
(09:51):
agree with one hundred percent of what's going on at
the HHS, specifically at the CDC right now. But the
reality is that a lot of the food if you
go into our grocery store, it is unhealthy unless you
are just walking the periphery and you are staying with
the whole fruits and vegetables, meats and fishes and others.
The more you venture to the center of the grocery store,
(10:13):
the more unhealthy it is. And we have manipulative and
deceptive marketing tactics that make people think that they are
giving themselves and their children something healthy when it's really not.
And unfortunately, the less healthy stuff is what is more affordable.
And so there's a lot of changes being made trying
to encourage people to eat healthier, get more active. It's
(10:35):
going to take a lot more than removing dies from
our food. It's going to take a lot of education,
and it's also going to take a lot of reform
when it comes to ensuring that these healthy foods are affordable.
But at least we're finally having this conversation, and I
think it's incredibly important. So many people these days are
triggered by phrases like make America Healthy Again. But if
you are cheering against making our nation healthier, I help
(10:58):
really understand you. You can be of a movement and
also support a lot of its strengths. And that's where
I'm at when it comes to this. Making sure our
environment's healthier, our food's healthier, and people have access to
healthier foods as certainly something that I can get on
board with. And when it comes to the military, I
wholeheartedly support Secretary Hegseth when it comes to the United
(11:21):
States should have the strongest military, and I'm not just
talking about weapons, I'm talking about overall health and with
that is part of the Make America Healthy Again movement.
So that is just my little recap of what has
gone on in Iran this week. I just think it
is really incredible and I wanted to share it with you.
Just because injuries happen, that doesn't mean that anything was
(11:44):
done wrong, or that the pilot or the weapons officers
ejected incorrectly. No, Unfortunately, these injuries are just part of
the job, and they know that going into it. If
you want to if you're playing a shot down, you
want to save your life, you need to eject. But
with ejecting comes very signif risk. Just like everything in medicine,
you know you have to weigh the risk benefits, and
(12:05):
you know these guys go into those positions knowing them,
and it is incredible that they were able to be
found so quickly and gotten to a medical attention as
soon as they did. I just I find stories like these,
you know, anytime I watch like a military movie like
twelve Strong. I'm not sure if you guys have seen that,
I just get the goosebumps because I just find the
(12:27):
bravery and the camaraderie of these missions to just be
next level. Like I can't even wrap my head around
what goes on during these missions. It's just so incredible,
and yes, I see it in medicine and my day
to day that how you know, a team of people
rally around to help a single person. But there's just something,
(12:47):
something even more inspiring about these military missions, and so
I wanted to share it. And maybe not everybody feels
the same way about military stories that I do, but well,
you know, now what, I think they're amazing and for me,
what really stands out. I mean, it's not isn't just
the technology or the rescue mission or anything else. It's
(13:09):
just the human body's ability to endure trauma, you know,
push through that pain and survive against extraordinary odds. You know,
in modern air combat, ejecting can save your life, but
it rarely leaves your body unscathed. And the injuries, again,
we don't have the details on them, but they're probably
going to take a while to heal from and he's
(13:29):
probably going to have some mental trauma that will need
to be addressed as well. But the mission highlights a
critical truth in medicine. The most dangerous injuries aren't always
the ones you see first. They're they're the ones that
will potentially unfold later. I'm doctor Nicole Safire, thank you
so much for listening to Wellness sun Mass. Be sure
to listen to Wellness sun Mass on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts,
(13:49):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Wellness un Mass. I'm doctor Nicole Safire, and
today we're going to talk about the incredible rescue mission
that happened in Iran over the weekend. Why are we
talking about this on a wellness podcast, you may ask, Well,
if you haven't been paying attention, this has been one
of the most incredible rescue missions, and from a medical standpoint,
it is awe inspiring that while we know that there
(00:26):
are injuries, there were no fatalities. So let me just
recap for anybody who have watched the news over the
last weekend. On April third, you know, a couple days
before Easter, USF fifteen E Strike Eagle, which is type
of plane, was shot down over a run. Both crew
members on board, the pilot and the weapons system officer,
(00:49):
had to eject themselves and what we knew were we
had to then go in to get them. A second aircraft,
in A ten, was also down the same day that
pilot ejected himself and was part of a separate rescue
mission that got a little bit less fanfare. Now, a
massive search and rescue mission went on over the course
(01:11):
of the next like forty five hours, like one hundred
and seventy six aircraft were involved. One hundred to two
hundred special operations personnel. This included Seal Team six, Delta Force,
Army Rangers, drones, electronic warfare DiiA. I don't even know.
I'm sure they can't even tell us everyone who was
involved in this. But there was electronic jamming, fake intelligence,
(01:35):
diversion flights, anything to just throw Iran off course. Because
you have to imagine we are now in war with Iran,
so Iran wanted to find our downed pilots and weapons
officers just as much as we did. They had very
different intentions as us in finding them, but they certainly
were on the search as well. What do we know.
(01:56):
The pilot was rescued first, but then that massive hunt
went on for the weapons specialty officer. So here's what
we know now about what happened. We have gotten some
statements from the White House. After forty five hours they
found the weapons officer. He had climbed up to a
mountaintop ridge and was hiding there and he was also
(02:18):
emitting an electronic beacon and that's how they were able
to find him. Now, the statements from the White House
is that people that were found they are alive. There
were no fatalities. There were some injuries, they have not
been specific on the injuries. We also had some fighting
on the ground. Military helicopter took fire, and of everyone
(02:39):
who ejected, anyone on the ground, anyone in that military helicopter,
there were no fatalities. Absolutely incredible in the time of war.
When we talk about fatalities, sometimes we forget that these
are human lives that we're talking about. But it was
an Eastern miracle, if you will, that there were no
fatalities reported with this rescue mission. Now I want to
(03:01):
talk to you about why there still can be severe
injuries even if everything went right when it came to
the pilot and the weapons officer ejecting, so the words
that were described were that there were seriously wounded, but
he survived and he was able to climb seven thousand
feet upper ridge and hid in a crevice of this
(03:22):
mountainous ridge for hours. So what happens when a pilot
ejects themselves from a plane. Let's think about this. Think
about a car accident when you're going fifty sixty miles
per hour and then all of a sudden you go
to a stop. The body is not necessarily made to
handle that sort of rapid acceleration deceleration movement. That's why
(03:42):
you can have severe injury, including from the mildest form,
just a mild form of whiplash when your head goes
forward and then back. Because the spine is flexible, it's
made up of many different joints and it's supposed to move.
And so if you are now going in significantly fast
start in an airplane, then you have to eject yourselves.
(04:03):
Now you're going from you're going straight, and then you
go straight up at a ninety degree angle. That's another
kind of acceleration change that the body is just not
equipped for. And that acceleration going up as you eject,
I think it can be anywhere from like twelve to
thirteen g's worth of force that is being ejected out,
So that pressure on the body, specifically on the spine,
(04:26):
the spinal vertebrae, which are these little rectangular bones that
make up the spine. They can be crushed by the
weight of this powerful force as you're being ejected out,
and you could also have like a severe whiplash in
terms of ligament injuries that are responsible for holding that
spine straight. So spinal injuries. Unfortunately, anywhere from thirty to
(04:47):
fifty percent of people who eject from these planes can
get some Now, not all spinal injuries are created equally.
You can have mild injuries that can result in pain
and maybe just a brace for a few weeks or months,
but you can also have severe spinal injuries that can
leave someone paralyzed or even dead. The good news is
(05:08):
we know that the pilot was able to climb seven
thousand feet to get to that mountaintop ridge, so the
chance of him being paralyzed, in my opinion, would be
exceedingly low, but the chance of him having some sort
of spinal injury is likely very high. Also, upon ejection,
the arms of the legs can get stuck or can
(05:28):
hit something on the way out, so you can have
some sort of extremity issue, and that happens about twenty
five percent of the time and thankfully less common now
that the pilots wear helmets. You can have total brain injury,
and this happens in less than ten percent of cases.
So these are all just upon ejecting out of the plane.
Now we have to worry about them coming down the
(05:48):
landing injuries. As you know, after they eject, they have
now a parachute. But that parachute again, even when it's
working in all its glory, you can still hit the
ground another deceleration injury very fast, and we see it
all the time people who go skydiving, which is why
I yelled to my kids, please don't ever jump out
of a plane voluntarily unless you're saving people. But you
(06:12):
can have you land on the ground and it can
crush the bones of your legs and of your pelvis
if you land too fast or you land at the
wrong angle. So also highly likely that maybe he had
some lower extremity injury, which would make climbing up that
ridge very difficult. But when you are in that fight
or flight moment, when you have your adrenaline and your
(06:33):
cortisol and all the other stress hormones, your body perceives
pain less because it wants you to survive. So you
see people walking on broken legs, ankles, dislocated whatever, because
and not feel not be inhibited by pain because they
have all of these stress hormones. Once he got safely
(06:54):
to that mountaintop and he found himself cover, I would
imagine that some of that pain and likely set in
and now we have to worry about the fact that
the temperatures were dipping into the thirties at night, and
now while that is cold and can get below freezing,
hypothermia tends to set in at lower temperatures. But because
(07:15):
he is injured, because he is stressed and he was
perspirating or sweating, he is more vulnerable to hypothermia injuries
as well. We also have to worry about dehydrating, seeing
as I doubt that he remembered to grab his water
bottle upon dejection when he was ejecting for his life.
So we also worry about altitude sickness being that high
(07:39):
up in the mountains, so his medical care is likely
going to be multifaceted, multi layered. But the fact that
he was able to climb up the ridge seven thousand feet,
he had the mental clarity to get there to send
that electronic beacon gives me hope that you know that
he will be okay and he is getting the best
medical care possible. These brave men and women who go
(08:03):
out to defend not only our nation but people all
across the globe. They are to be praised. It is
incredible what this person and everyone who was involved in
this mission went through, and you know, Secretary of War
heag Seth, you know, takes a lot of heat when
he talks about we need the best of the best
in the military, and he talks about some of the
(08:25):
past policies where unfortunately the health of our nation has
made military recruitment very difficult because not a lot of
people can pass the physical benchmarks that are set because
we are a nation of chronic illness and obesity. And
instead of lowering the bar to who should be in
(08:46):
the military, Secretary Hegseth is like, no, not only should
we not maintain but we need to raise the bar
because we need the most mentally and physically strong who
are going to be able to be put into these
positions like these were in this time of war. Who
are going to be able to have the physical and
mental fortitude to get themselves to that ridge. We can't
(09:09):
lower the bar. We can't say, all right, well, you
know America is obese, so I guess we should now
just allow obese people into the military into these combat situations. No,
we need to do what we can to get Americans
healthy so that we can have the strongest people in
our military who are defending our freedom. That's my opinion.
I hate when I hear people say, well, we just
(09:31):
need to lower the bar to the new status quo
of America's health, and I don't think that's true. I
think we need to take a long, hard look at
the health of our nation and make sure that Americans
have access to affordable food, physical activity. And that's a
lot of what make America Healthy Again is doing right now.
You can be a critic of it. Absolutely. I don't
(09:51):
agree with one hundred percent of what's going on at
the HHS, specifically at the CDC right now. But the
reality is that a lot of the food if you
go into our grocery store, it is unhealthy unless you
are just walking the periphery and you are staying with
the whole fruits and vegetables, meats and fishes and others.
The more you venture to the center of the grocery store,
(10:13):
the more unhealthy it is. And we have manipulative and
deceptive marketing tactics that make people think that they are
giving themselves and their children something healthy when it's really not.
And unfortunately, the less healthy stuff is what is more affordable.
And so there's a lot of changes being made trying
to encourage people to eat healthier, get more active. It's
(10:35):
going to take a lot more than removing dies from
our food. It's going to take a lot of education,
and it's also going to take a lot of reform
when it comes to ensuring that these healthy foods are affordable.
But at least we're finally having this conversation, and I
think it's incredibly important. So many people these days are
triggered by phrases like make America Healthy Again. But if
you are cheering against making our nation healthier, I help
(10:58):
really understand you. You can be of a movement and
also support a lot of its strengths. And that's where
I'm at when it comes to this. Making sure our
environment's healthier, our food's healthier, and people have access to
healthier foods as certainly something that I can get on
board with. And when it comes to the military, I
wholeheartedly support Secretary Hegseth when it comes to the United
(11:21):
States should have the strongest military, and I'm not just
talking about weapons, I'm talking about overall health and with
that is part of the Make America Healthy Again movement.
So that is just my little recap of what has
gone on in Iran this week. I just think it
is really incredible and I wanted to share it with you.
Just because injuries happen, that doesn't mean that anything was
(11:44):
done wrong, or that the pilot or the weapons officers
ejected incorrectly. No, Unfortunately, these injuries are just part of
the job, and they know that going into it. If
you want to if you're playing a shot down, you
want to save your life, you need to eject. But
with ejecting comes very signif risk. Just like everything in medicine,
you know you have to weigh the risk benefits, and
(12:05):
you know these guys go into those positions knowing them,
and it is incredible that they were able to be
found so quickly and gotten to a medical attention as
soon as they did. I just I find stories like these,
you know, anytime I watch like a military movie like
twelve Strong. I'm not sure if you guys have seen that,
I just get the goosebumps because I just find the
(12:27):
bravery and the camaraderie of these missions to just be
next level. Like I can't even wrap my head around
what goes on during these missions. It's just so incredible,
and yes, I see it in medicine and my day
to day that how you know, a team of people
rally around to help a single person. But there's just something,
(12:47):
something even more inspiring about these military missions, and so
I wanted to share it. And maybe not everybody feels
the same way about military stories that I do, but well,
you know, now what, I think they're amazing and for me,
what really stands out. I mean, it's not isn't just
the technology or the rescue mission or anything else. It's
(13:09):
just the human body's ability to endure trauma, you know,
push through that pain and survive against extraordinary odds. You know,
in modern air combat, ejecting can save your life, but
it rarely leaves your body unscathed. And the injuries, again,
we don't have the details on them, but they're probably
going to take a while to heal from and he's
(13:29):
probably going to have some mental trauma that will need
to be addressed as well. But the mission highlights a
critical truth in medicine. The most dangerous injuries aren't always
the ones you see first. They're they're the ones that
will potentially unfold later. I'm doctor Nicole Safire, thank you
so much for listening to Wellness sun Mass. Be sure
to listen to Wellness sun Mass on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts,
(13:49):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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