Iran claims it shot down 3 Israeli stealth fighters

State media also claimed the capture of a female pilot. Israel issued a blanket denial.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Desperate for a win as the Israel Air Force pounds targets across the country at will, Iran has claimed to have shot down three IAF F-35 stealth fighters over the last two days.

Its semi-official state media went as far as to assert that an IAF pilot – a female – had been captured after ejecting from her jet, and that Iran is holding another one’s body.

Israel issued a blanket denial of the claim, with Col. Avichay Adraee, IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, saying, “This news being spread by Iranian media is completely baseless.”

Produced by America’s Lockheed Martin, the F-35 is the premier stealth fighter in the world, with an extremely low radar signature, making it almost completely undetectable.

The IAF has two squadrons of them, all fitted with specialized Israeli modifications of the electronic warfare and weapons systems, and C4I (command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence) domains.

No other media have been able to independently confirm the Iranian claims, and images circulating on the internet of supposed wreckage have been debunked by military experts.

On Friday, Iran “confirmed” that its forces had managed to shoot down two Israeli F-16 jets, and its Tasnim news agency reported specifically that a female pilot named Sarah Ahronot had been captured.

Fact-checking sites quickly went to work and found that the image of the F-16 supposedly downed over Tehran was actually a photo well-publicized in November 2015 of a Russian fighter jet shot down by Turkey that Ankara claimed “violated its airspace” close to the Syrian border.

The photo of the “captured” pilot turned out to be that of Lieutenant Daniela Figueroa, the first female pilot of the Chilean Navy, as reported on December 23, 2021.

Another story, now circulating, in Iranian media that may possibly be more believable is that several trucks have been found that were carrying drones which Israeli agents were planning to use in another internal strike on military targets.

The Mossad itself publicized on Friday that its agents in the Islamic Republic had launched precision-guided UAVs in several places to take out key air defense systems and missile launchers before Israel’s initial wave of 200 IAF jets struck Iran’s most sensitive sites.

The use of trucks to bring attack drones close to their targets before launching them in an attack was used by Ukraine last month to destroy a third of Russia’s bomber fleet.

Iranian news stations also reported that five Iranian citizens have been arrested on suspicion of working for Israel, while the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Monday that a man named Esmail Fekri had been executed as an Israeli spy.

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