Did Israeli F-35s Overfly Iran? Iranian general fired for failure to prevent incursion

In listening to an interview given by Malcolm Hoenlein, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, I was surprised to hear him casually say (at 5:10): "Israel flew F-35s to Tehran and made it sort of public. The leadership of Iran know they did, and (the F-35s) made it back to Israel (Ed: Rough transcript made from podcast)."

This was news to me, so I did a Bing search that returned mixed results. CNBC put out a piece last week that treated the issue as "old news" or maybe even "fake news":

In July 2018, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Israel had flown a test mission of at least three F-35 jets to Tehran and back from an airbase near Tel Aviv. While never confirmed publicly, a good number of military and political leaders in the region believed and still believe the story. The long-rumored threat the F-35 posed to Iran now seemed like a reality.

Earlier this month, reports in the same Kuwaiti newspaper said that Iran’s military leadership panicked enough over the purported stealth mission that it kept news of it from reaching Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But when Khamenei found out about the mission, he reportedly moved to fire not only Iran’s air force chief but also the long-serving and powerful commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. That’s major impact without even firing a shot.

In another recent piece, CNBC noted:

...[in] a somewhat cheeky statement...Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu....barely held back a smile as he said that Israel can reach Iran, but Iran cannot reach Israel. He didn’t add the words “undetected by radar,” but it was surely implied.

Joel Pollak, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News, recently posted about the purported incursion here, but he, too, questioned the veracity of the reports.

Pollak linked to this piece by National Interest writer Dario Leone containing this tidbit:

According to Al Jarida, Iranian intelligence received top secret information that the Israeli fighter planes even managed to photograph Iran’s underground bases. Khamenei, who received this information, now suspects a cooperation between Russia and Israel, and that the Russians gave Israel the secret code of the Russian radar in Iran....

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is reported to have fired Brigadier General Farzad Ismaili, the commander of Iran’s air defense system, over the incursion.

ha
ha

flying over Iran is the least of what Jerusalem can do to that country....
(and Israel doesn’t need its airplanes to destroy Iran from human history)

pray that the good Iranian people manage to free themselves from their Satanic “Moslem” military dictators

>>>Khamenei, who received this information, now suspects a cooperation between Russia and Israel, and that the Russians gave Israel the secret code of the Russian radar in Iran....

I wonder who told him that? Kham, is slowly learning no one can be trusted & paranoia is setting in!

Expecting the Iranian Air Force to stop them is silly.

Expecting the Iranian air defense system to detect them is NOT silly ...

Especially F-35s ... "Everybody KNOWS" that it's a completely useless POS ...

( ... or maybe not ...)

“They improve everything we sell them.
Then, we buy it back...”

Correct. That’s been my job for years now.

I’ve bombed the crap out of New Mexico and Nevada now more than I’ve bombed the Negev.

American engines and airframes; Israeli software and tech = best in the world.

My wife can also bring back kosher Tex-Mex and BBQ to Israel. We may open a restaurant.

American engine mfg is just amazing.

I believe the Israelis did fly the mission and the mission certainly shows the capabilities of the F-35, including stealth and combat radius.

I would be most interested to learn the route of flight and profile flown. If the profile was hi-lo-lo-hi, was the mission flown without in-flight refueling? Is the F-35 stealth good enough for a hi-hi-hi profile?

Did Jordan and Saudi Arabia give permission for Israeli jets to fly through their airspace?

“Fear uncertaintly distrust”. Many folks, Freepers too have been throwing up a wall of negativity concerning the F35 for years. It is new tech , having suffered teething pains. It has suffered from the usual political....”lets make it all comprehensive”(/s) way of thinking which has caused the fighter to be hobbled in its development time scales. An “all comprehensive thinking congress and military”(/s) wanted the f35 to be an all comprehensive multitasking fighter in a way that the f22 was not.(Actually the f22 works very well which is why Obama trashed the program limiting it to the numbers built).

The f117a nighthawk is stealthy but slow. The f35 is stealthy and supersonic and agile in flight but has no great range distance due to it being laden down with all sorts of “all comprehensive multitasking”(/s) requirements. Many folks grew to dislike it as it was being developed but slowly it’s become an acceptable fighter. Hence the FUD surrounding it. Some of the FUD may have been encouraged by our military as a means to throw off our adversaries as to just how well the jet works. The Israeli’s just demonstrated it! If the jet, properly tweaked, is allowed to function true to it’s design, it will sneak up on you, give you a haircut before radar even registers a ripple. That is what the Israelis did.

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