In the early hours of Sunday morning, a small team of American commandos fought their way to a wounded US Air Force colonel and brought him home from the rugged Zagros Mountains in southwest Iran.
The operation, reportedly carried out by Navy SEAL Team 6, involved US attack aircraft dropping bombs and opening fire on Iranian convoys to keep enemy forces away.
The location, Iran, may have been coincidental, but it was seminal in this SEAL team's history.
SEAL Team Six was built almost five decades ago because of a catastrophe in Iran, a failed 1980 attempt by US special forces to rescue American hostages from Iran.
The team's defining public moments include the 2011 killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad and the 2009 rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates.
These missions have made Team Six, as per NYT, 'one of the nation's most mythologized, most secretive and least scrutinized military organizations.'
