Speaking at his weekly press conference on Monday, Esmaeil Baqaei said Iran maintains regular contacts with Qatar and has conveyed its concerns and considerations to the Qatari side regarding the missing pilots.

He stressed that Tehran is seriously demanding clarification of the fate of the Iranian Air Force personnel who had been dispatched on a defensive mission “to target the source of the US aggression.”

“We have been pursuing the issue since the very day we became aware of it,” Baqaei said, adding that he was present with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi when the latter was informed about the matter on the evening of the first days of the US-Israeli war of aggression, after which the pilots’ fate was immediately placed on the agenda.

Baqaei said Iran sent its first correspondence to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on February 15, while the Iranian Embassy in Doha also began following up on the matter from those early days.

“As long as their status has not been clarified, the assumption is that they have been captured, and we are using all capacities to determine the status of the pilots,” he said.

He reiterated that the fate of the four pilots had been pursued from the earliest days, emphasizing that “they were on a defensive operation.”

Iran has recently made public for the first time its assessment that three of the pilots who went missing after a March 2 operation against the US-operated Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar were captured alive by Qatari forces.

Brigadier General Mohammad Baqerzadeh, commander of the Missing in Action Search Committee of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, raised the issue in a letter to ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger on August 15, expressing grave concern over their fate and urging the organization to investigate their condition and facilitate their release.

According to Baqerzadeh, two Iranian Air Force Su-24s carried out the mission but were hit by enemy air defenses while returning, forcing their crews to eject. One of the four pilots, Brigadier General Majid Kazemi, was martyred, with DNA testing later confirming his death and his remains returned to Iran. Baqerzadeh identified the three other pilots as Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian and Omran Behraveshian, saying they had been captured alive by Qatari forces.

The Iranian military official said Tehran had been unable, despite diplomatic follow-ups, to meet or interview the three pilots or establish contact between them and their families. He cited provisions of the Third Geneva Convention concerning prisoners of war and called on the ICRC to urgently establish contact with the pilots, report on their health and help secure their “swift release.”

The disclosure followed months of uncertainty over the pilots’ whereabouts. Iranian officials have repeatedly urged Qatar to clarify their status and act in accordance with international humanitarian law, while Qatari authorities have said they had no information about the missing airmen. The March 2 operation came amid Iran’s broader military response to US and Israeli attacks that began on February 28.