US officials championed the rescue of a crew member whose fighter jet was downed in Iran, but analysts said the episode illustrated the capabilities of even a weakened Tehran.

The stunning retrieval involved a US Air Force colonel hiking to a crevice where he hid and set off an emergency beacon, drawing American commandos in what The New York Times said was “one of the most challenging and complex [missions] in the history of US Special Operations.”

Yet the shooting down of the warplane, one of two hit by Iran, illustrated Tehran’s strategy to “inflict tactical defeats on the US and its allies in hopes not of winning militarily, but of surviving and sapping their will,” The Wall Street Journal said.