In June 2025, throughout the 12-day struggle between Israel and Iran, the state-owned Iranian media repeatedly claimed that the Iranian air defenses had downed two Israel Air Pressure (IAF) F-35I Adir stealth fighter jets.
The claims had been dismissed by Israel as Pretend Information. Now, the Iranian state media has admitted that the claims had been false.
Israel launched ‘Operation Rising Lion’ on June 13, 2025, deploying a whole bunch of Israeli fighter jets that struck Iranian targets, killed Revolutionary Guard commanders, and broken army amenities. On the identical day, Iran retaliated with a whole bunch of ballistic missiles and drones, resulting in what got here to be referred to as the ’12-Day Conflict.’
Iran’s state media claimed the downing of two Israeli Air Pressure (IAF) F-35I Adir jets within the preliminary days of the battle, proper after the jets flew practically 2,000 kilometers to hold out the precision strikes.
The claims, introduced with out offering any credible proof, sparked curiosity as they had been billed by the Iranian media because the first-ever occasion of the F-35’s shootdown wherever on this planet.
“Iran has earned the excellence of being the primary nation on this planet to efficiently shoot down fifth-generation fighter jets by concentrating on two stealth F-35 fighters belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state-owned Press TV mentioned on the time. These claims had been reportedly amplified by different fashionable media shops within the nation, in addition to fashionable social media handles that had been extensively reporting war-related developments on the time.
On June 14, a picture of what’s claimed to be the wreckage of an F-35I Adir shot down by the Islamic regime was being circulated on social media. Nevertheless, it was dismissed as an AI-generated picture, as reported by the EurAsian Instances on the time.
In the meantime, the Israel Protection Forces (IDF) vehemently rejected the claims. “Pretend Iranian media,” mentioned Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s spokesman. “This information being unfold by Iranian media is totally baseless.”
Practically six months after the incident, Iran’s state media has lastly acknowledged that it made these claims incorrectly, noting they had been primarily based on unreliable info from a army official.
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Throughout a speech at Beheshti College in Tehran, Peyman Jabali, the pinnacle of the Iranian Broadcasting Company, acknowledged that his group dedicated an expert blunder by airing the false stories.
“Had been we within the sky to witness the fighter jet crash? Had been we behind the protection system? Somebody from the army officers knowledgeable us, after which they ultimately realized…that the data was not credible and gave us one other piece of reports,” he was just lately quoted as saying.
Jabali expressed remorse, saying that the false reporting undermined the broadcaster’s credibility, and prophesied that media shops shouldn’t depend on sources except there are express authorities bulletins.
He additionally denounced what he referred to as a “rhetoric of weak point” coming from Iran.
“He thought that, in his opinion, the top of the Islamic Republic can be on June 16 with the bombing of the Iranian Broadcasting Company,” Jabali mentioned, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We had been proud within the struggle, we had been proud, we resisted, we shocked the world, we pushed the regime again for years. They could not say it, however the losses that the Zionist regime suffered weren’t simply these buildings, and the Weizmann Institute and the missile bases, however its whole computing system collapsed.”
The F-35 plane in query—the ‘Adir’— is a variant of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II, custom-built for Israel. The plane are modified in these major areas: command, management, communications, computer systems, and intelligence (C4I), digital warfare, and weapons integration. It has sensors, data-processing capabilities, Israel-developed countermeasures, and cutting-edge digital warfare methods.
The plane seamlessly integrates with and shares information with the IAF’s F-15s and F-16s, guaranteeing the efficient execution of precision-guided strikes in contested environments, such because the one carried out towards Iran.
“The plane flew deep into Iranian territory, encountered little resistance, and returned with no single recorded loss,” as famous by Israeli officers on the time.
Moreover, the F-35I’s skill to detect, geolocate, and neutralize radar-emitting threats, similar to Russian-supplied air protection methods, enabled Israel to dismantle Iran’s command-and-control networks and helped blind its defenses for subsequent strikes.
Nevertheless, the F-35, like every other refined stealth platform, just isn’t invincible. For example, throughout the US bombing operation towards the Houthis undertaken in early 2025, a Houthi missile virtually struck an American F-35 Lightning II plane, forcing the pilot to take evasive motion.
F-35s Fly Freely Over Iran
The Lockheed Martin F-35, the world’s hottest and extensively used fifth-generation plane, just isn’t used to being eclipsed by every other plane. However, when the US launched ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ on June 22, the F-35s had been tasked with escorting the B-2 bombers that dropped bunker buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear amenities.
Talking on the second-quarter earnings name in July 2025, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet mentioned the mission was led by the F-35 and F-22, including that these fighters offered the air dominance and protection suppression required for the bombers to succeed in Iran’s hardened nuclear websites.
“Our platforms operated basically undetected in extremely defended and contested airspace, underscoring the worth of superior stealth, superior digital warfare, and broadband communications functionality,” he asserted.
Whereas the function of F-35s as escorts had already been praised, the US Air Pressure (USAF) revealed in November that the plane performed each suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) and offered fighter cowl for the strike power because it departed Iran.
The 388th Fighter Wing, which relies at Hill Air Pressure Base in Utah, mentioned that the fighters “paved the way in which” for the flight of seven B-2s that delivered 14 GBU-57 bunker busters, penetrating the hardened, deeply buried targets in Iran. The plane reportedly used the Agile Fight Employment (ACE) technique and flew from a number of websites.
The Pentagon had beforehand disclosed that 125 plane participated in Midnight Hammer. The fighter escorts fired about thirty rounds at Iranian surface-to-air methods.
The newest data from the USAF means that the 388th Fighter Wing’s F-35s “had been the primary plane to penetrate Iranian airspace, suppressing enemy air defenses and escorting the B-2s to focus on areas.”
Based on one launch, “the SEAD mission requires ‘kicking down the door,’” using sensors, digital warfare, stealth, and concentrating on methods to get rid of attainable floor threats to the strike package deal.
“The effectiveness of this strike validated the entire capabilities of the F-35 we’ve been speaking about for years,” Col. Charles Fallon, 388th Fighter Wing commander, mentioned in an announcement. The strike package deal “relied on our pilots and this plane to carry out, and each proved greater than succesful.” He mentioned the operation demonstrated the F-35 is “obligatory…for in the present day’s struggle and tomorrow’s struggle, wherever which may be.”
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