Iran has added a new twist to a wartime mystery involving three missing airmen and a Gulf state that says it has nothing to hide, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tehran now alleges that three air force pilots whose Sukhoi Su-24 bombers were shot down by Qatar early in the US-Iran conflict are alive and being secretly held there, and it has asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit them. Qatar flatly rejects the claim, saying it recovered only one body, mounted search-and-rescue operations for the other three crew members who were aboard, and invited Iranian officials to review the evidence—an offer it says Iran ignored. Qatar also says it attempted to coordinate handing over the remains of the pilot it did locate, Reuters reports.
The dispute surfaces as Qatar tries to mediate stalled US-Iran talks over reopening the Strait of Hormuz, underscoring how unresolved battlefield incidents are complicating already fragile diplomacy in a region critical to global oil shipments. Iran says the pilots who ejected and survived are Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian, and Omran Behraveshian, and that the pilot who died is Majid Kazemi, the New York Times reports.