Tehran suspects Israel is being assisted by Moscow
Tehran suspects that Moscow has given Jerusalem codes from the S-300 aerial defense systems, which enabled Israel’s multirole F-35 combat aircraft to stealthily penetrate Iran’s airspace, fly over several major cities (Tehran, Karajrak, Isfahan, Shiraz and Bandar Abbas) and carry out an aerial survey of the Islamic republic’s anti-air defense systems, the Qatari news agency Al Jarida reports.
According to the Qatari journalists, the Israeli aircraft flew unhindered over virtually the entire western part of Iran, from the south to the north and back.
Iran’s aerial defense system, including the anti-air missile systems supplied by Russia, were unable to follow the Israeli aircraft’s movement into and out of the country’s airspace.
The article states that Ismail Kowsari, deputy head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, kept the incident a secret from Ayatollah Khamenei, fearing criticism. Kowsari was later dismissed from his position.
Iranian intelligence reportedly concealed the fact of the flyover by the Israeli aircraft, which were able to test out the possibility of an airstrike against structural elements of Iran’s aerial defense system, a number of other military and industrial targets, and to carry out a detailed aerial survey of a number of facilities, including secret military bases.
The Qatar news outlet has proposed previously that Israeli aircraft could be flying to Iran and back several times a day, invisible to the Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian and Russian detection systems.
In April 2018, Russia said that Israel’s F-35s could not and did not wish to fool the S-400 in Syria.
In 2018, an American military expert said that Israel had made changes to the F-35’s onboard system, turning the aircraft into a monster.
That same year, the commander of the Israeli Air Force said that the Israelis are the first in the world to try out the F-35 in combat conditions.