Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu
Live reporter

Image source, AFP via Getty Images

We have heard from President Donald Trump, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine at the White House.

They gave more detail on the mission to rescue two US fighter pilots after their aircraft was downed in Iran last Friday.

Here are some main lines from the news conference:

• President Trump says not everyone in the military was convinced about the wide-scale rescue efforts especially as the search for the second pilot continued for almost 48 years
• He says he was told it was "a very dangerous mission" but "felt it was worth it"

• Trump says the mission was compromised and made difficult after a news story reported one pilot missing leading Iranian officials to launch their own search for his capture. He says US officials are working hard to find the original source of the information
• Trump also says any new deal with Iran to end the fighting must include allowing the "free traffic of oil" through the Strait of Hormuz

• Following threats about the US attacking Iranian infrastructure, Trump suggests the US campaign is beneficial to ordinary Iranians who he says are "willing to suffer to have their freedom"

Trump briefing includes detailed threat to Iran's infrastructurepublished at 20:12 BST

20:12 BST

Daniel Bush
Washington correspondent

After weeks of making general threats against Iran, Donald Trump issued a new warning on Monday that was far more specific: the US will bomb “every bridge” in the country if Iran doesn’t reach a deal to end the war “that’s acceptable to me."

It was perhaps the most detailed, concrete threat Trump has made since launching the war in late February.

Trump also said the US would attack Iran’s power plants and the strikes against the country's infrastructure would start at 20:00 Eastern Time, taking four hours, ending at midnight.

It’s unclear if the US military is capable of destroying all of that infrastructure on that timeline.

It’s also unclear if Trump will actually follow through. He has walked back on previous threats to Iran since the start of the war. But this time Trump has left himself very little, if any, wiggle room to deliver on his promise.

A reporter asks about Trump's expletive-laden Truth Social post in which he called the Iranians "crazy bastards".

The president says "I don't care" about critics who question his mental health over that post, and he says the US was being ripped off for many years before he came to office.

He doubles down on his promises to target civilian infrastructure in Iran tomorrow evening, saying he will take out the country's bridges by midnight. He didn't clarify a timezone for the midnight deadline, but in an earlier post on Truth Social, the president said the strikes on bridges and power plants will start at 20:00 EDT Tuesday (0100 BST Wednesday).

"Every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night," he says.

The only way Iran will be able to rebuild their country after the war is with the help of the US, he says.

"We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation," he says, saying in that case the US would prefer if important infrastructure weren't damaged.

Trump once again criticises Nato for not getting involved, also naming other countries like Australia and Japan. Some countries in the Middle East have helped, though, he says.

After an hour and a half, the news conference then comes to an end.

Image source, Reuters

Trump is now asked whether he would consider ending the conflict in Iran with Tehran charging tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

The US president says he would prefer for the US to charge tolls to vessels, saying "we're the winner"

"We won," he says. "They are militarily defeated... we have a concept where we'll charge tolls."

Trump says that in order to meet his 48-hour deadline - set to end at 20:00 Tuesday (0100 Wednesday) - there needs to be a deal with Iran "that's acceptable to me", adding that "part of that deal is going to be we want free traffic of oil".

Image source, Getty Images

Trump is still at the podium answering questions.

He says the biggest problem the US currently has in negotiations is that Iranian officials can't communicate.

Trump adds that he is very disappointed in Nato countries after allies refused his request to join the Iranian mission. He says he was most disappointed with the UK.

"They have two old broken aircraft carriers" he says, adding that the British ships "barely work".

When asked about the role of Kurdish forces in the war with Iran, Trumps says he would rather the Kurds stay away.

He then adds that although his 10-day deadline for Iran to make a deal was supposed to be up today, he decided to extend it to tomorrow to "be a nice person" the day after Easter.

But after tomorrow's deadline passes, "they're going to have no bridges", he says. "They're going to have no power plants. Stone Ages, yeah," he says, referring to a previous threat to send Iran "back to the Stone Ages".

Image source, Getty Images

Not everyone in the military was on board with conducting the rescue mission on Saturday, Trump says, responding to another reporter's question.

"There were military people that said you just don't do this," he says, adding that hundreds of people could have been killed.

"I decided to do it," Trump says.

Another journalist asks if there was any point when he thought about aborting the mission. He doesn't directly answer.

"I was told this is a very dangerous mission," he answers. "I just felt it was worth it."

Trump is now answering questions from reporters at the White House. He's asked how he would react should the Iranian people "rise up against the regime".

The president says "they should do it", saying the consequences would be "great".

Trump also pushes back against criticism of his plan, saying "everything has been thought out by us".

He's then asked about the impact of the US targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran, to which Trump says Iranians would be "willing to suffer to have their freedom".

Trump adds that the US has had "numerous intercepts" suggesting Iranian people are calling for further strikes against the regime.

Image source, Getty Images

Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is up next at the podium. He begins by again reiterating that the rescue mission was a dangerous undertaking for the US military.

Detailing the early hours of the rescue, he says a US A-10 plane was involved in trying to find the first downed pilot, but it came under fire from gunmen in Iran, forcing it to fly to a nearby friendly country where the pilot safely ejected from the A-10.

Caine explains that after the first pilot was recovered, the search for the second crew member continued even as Iranian forces also embarked on their own mission to capture the stranded US service member.

He says the rescue mission was protected overhead by air armada, and that both crew members are now safely back with the US military.

"The United States of America will recover our war fighters, anywhere in the world, under any conditions when we want to," he says.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

We've so far heard very little detail in this news conference about the wider conflict and how the administration plans to handle the war, or how the US will withdraw from it.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's comment that "Iran has a choice", however, is telling.

By saying that Iran should "choose wisely" and noting that "this president does not play around", Hegseth seems to be suggesting, as Trump has in the past, that Iran should come to the negotiating table and meet US demands or face a wave of expanded strikes.

So far, that kind of negotiating has not happened, and earlier Trump said that Iran's "significant proposal" was "not good enough".

It is unclear what that proposal entailed, but reports have suggested that Iran has made maximalist demands and is wary of the US proposal.

In a series of phone interviews today, Trump has expressed optimism that a deal is possible, but has also very much left open the possibility that devastating strikes against Iranian infrastructure remain an option.

Today will be largest volume of strikes on Iran since the start of the war, Hegseth says, repeating a frequent line.

And tomorrow, the strikes will be even heavier, he adds, which is when Trump has set an 20:00 deadline Tuesday (0100BST) for Iran to make a deal.

Image source, reu

Next up to speak is Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who touts the skill and precision it took to rescue the US aviator.

"Iran's military is embarrassed and humiliated and they should be," Hegseth says.

This was "deep" into Iran, he says, and the airman activated his transponder to send the message "God is good".

Hegseth alludes to the dates of the pilot's rescue happening on Easter weekend, seeming to draw a biblical parallel to airman's concealment in a cave on Saturday before his rescue.

Crews performed with near perfection under fire, he says.

Image source, Reuters

In final remarks, Trump says it was "like finding a needle in a haystack, finding this pilot". He then gives the floor to CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe says the rescue operation in Iran was a "no fail mission", as his agents were committed to bringing the Air Force personnel back home.

He says that while he cannot share all details about the operation, he says both human and tech assets were deployed to locate the missing airmen.

The CIA director says the "audacious" operation was a "race against the clock", which relied on a deception campaign to confuse Iranians "desperately hunting for our airmen".

He says agents received confirmation on Saturday night that the missing service member had found refuge in a mountain crevice "still invisible to the enemy but not to the CIA".

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

Image source, Reuters

Trump has directed much of his ire at the media's handling of the rescue of the two US F-15 crew members, arguing that a leak from within the government endangered American lives on the ground in Iran.

The US president has long had a contentious relationship with journalists, who he regularly derides as "fake news".

But today's comments are stronger than usual, in that he has directly vowed that the journalists who broke the story will give up their source or "go to jail".

"We are gonna go to the media company that released it and we are going to say ' national security, give it up or go to jail,'" he says.

That statement is likely to raise alarm among members of the US media, some of whom have accused Trump in the past of trying to clamp down on freedom of the press - a charge that Trump denies.

He says the leak made the operation to find the missing service member even more difficult. "We have to find that leaker because that is a sick person; probably didn't realise the extent of how bad it was... They put this mission at great risk."

We now know that several US news outlets held back on reporting about the rescue mission over the weekend that recovered the F-15's weapons systems officer while the operation was still ongoing.

Trump says the rescue mission to retrieve the second US airman, who was still trapped in Iran days after the first was rescued, involved 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refuelling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft, and more.

"We were bringing them all over, and a lot of it was subterfuge. We wanted to have them think he was in a different location, because they had a vast military force out there - thousands of people were looking," Trump says.

The "heroic" officer evaded capture on the ground in Iran for almost 48 hours, Trump says.

US forces had to leave planes behind in Iran, but rather than let Iran get hold of the equipment on those aircraft, the US military "blew them up to smithereens", Trump says of the planes.

"I never forget the extraordinary risk taken by the warriors that we send into battle," he adds.

Trump sticks to the script in early remarkspublished at 18:21 BST

18:21 BST

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

Image source, Reuters

At least so far, Trump is reading from written remarks at the White House press room lectern, as he recounts the details of the downed US aircraft and the recovery efforts.

As is typical of this president, he is frequently riffing on the prepared script.

"We're doing unbelievably well," he says of the ongoing war against Iran.

He then makes a reference to tomorrow night’s deadline for attacks against Iranian energy and transportation infrastructure if Iran doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz.

"The entire country can be taken out in one night – and that night might be tomorrow night," he says.

Trump calls Iran "evil" and doubles down on threats against the country's civilian infrastructure that he posted on social media earlier.

"The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night," he says.

The president talks more about the rescue, saying he ordered US armed forces to do whatever was necessary to bring home the stranded airman.

He says they took "extraordinary risks", and that none of the rescuers were injured.

The ejected airman himself was injured badly, though, and scaled cliff faces while bleeding profusely to transmit his location, Trump says.

Image source, Reuters

President Donald Trump starts his news conference by saying the administration will "celebrate the success" of the rescue operation of two US Air Force members shot down over Iran at the weekend.

He says similar missions aren't usually attempted, but adds there was "great talent" involved - but we got a bit of luck too, he adds.

Trump describes the operation as "historic" and says it shows that in the US military, "we leave no American behind".

Image source, Reuters

President Donald Trump steps up to the podium and is about to speak to the press from the White House.

You can watch live at the top of the page and we'll bring you all the key lines here.

Sarah Smith
North America editor, reporting from the White House

Image source, Sarah Smith / BBC

There is a strict hierarchy of reporters in Washington.

A few hundred of us are lucky enough to have passes that let us enter the White House grounds whenever we like. But only 49 journalists have assigned seats inside the press briefing room. It's a hallowed privilege to get a spot on the seating chart.

On a day like today - when President Trump himself will appear to take questions - the small briefing room is absolutely packed with journalists who don't have assigned seats, crammed around the edges of the room. Many have been here for hours already, trying to secure a spot from which to ask the president a question.

As we wait we can hear bursts of music coming from the Easter celebrations on the South Lawn