No definite proof for Iran's claims it shot down Israeli F-35 fighter jets
Since Israel's offensive against Iran began in the early hours of June 13, Israel has been circulating photos of its fighter jets flying towards Iran to destroy its nuclear sites and arsenal of ballistic missiles.
The evening the offensive began, the Tehran Times, a media outlet with close links to the Iranian regime, announced that "an Israeli pilot' had been 'captured' and that Israel had said that two of its fighter planes had been shot down.
The Iranian press agency Tasnim News, which has close links to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, reported the same story, this time claiming that the pilot who had been captured was a woman.
'Iran downs fourth Israeli F-35'
Press TV, a television outlet controlled by the Iranian regime, reported that Iran had become the "first country to shoot down fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets'. This US-built fighter jet is considered one of the most effective in the world and is especially known for its stealth.
Israel was quick to deny these claims through their Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee, who denounced "fake Iranian media outlets that spread baseless lies'.
In the days that followed, Iranian media outlets continued to share what they said was a count of how many F-35 fighter jets the Iranian army had shot down. Press TV published an article on June 15 claiming that a third F-35 had been destroyed, explaining how the Iranian air defence system had managed to hit one of these planes.
A day later, a headline in the Tehran Times read 'Iran downs 4th Israeli F-35'.
"According to Tasnim news agency, the aircraft was identified by Iranian air defence systems stationed in the area and was successfully targeted with a precision-guided missile,' the article reads.
These allegations aim to refute Israel's announcement of "full aerial superiority" in the early days of the attack. That declaration came after the Israeli army largely destroyed Iran's air defences, a stated objective of their military operation.
'There is no proof that Iran downed Israeli F-35s'
However, for the time being, there is no proof confirming these claims. While anonymous sources apparently told the Tehran Times that Iran picked up debris from the F-35, the Iranian army hasn't shared any authenticated images, photos, or videos. No information was released about the identity of the pilot allegedly captured, though Iran claimed to have captured two.
The FRANCE 24 Observers team spoke with Janes Intelligence, a military analysis company that works with open-source data, which said that 'there is no evidence that Iran has shot down any Israeli F-35s'.
Pierre Razoux, the academic director at the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES) and author of a study looking at 'the challenges of air superiority over the Middle East', is also sceptical about Iran's claims. He says that these losses are 'extremely unlikely, especially without photos. If it were true, Iran would be hurrying to unveil the photos'.
Iran's air defence system: 'not the most modern'
Several military experts interviewed agree with this assessment and say that it is unlikely that Iran's anti-aircraft defence systems could have reached the Israeli F-35s.
"It's really hard to destroy an F-35 because it is made not to be detected,' says Jean-Christophe Noël, a former fighter pilot and a researcher with the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), highlighting that the F-35 is built for 'stealth'.
"That doesn't mean that it is unstoppable,' he added. 'But it turns out that it is stealthy enough that Iran's surface-to-air missile batteries failed, batteries which are not the most modern.'
Another expert agrees with this analysis.
"To down a stealth aircraft, first you have to detect it in certain bands of frequency, then transmit its position to other radar to guide a missile: that requires a complex coordination that the Iranian army has not mastered, all the more so because Israel weakened its air defence system,' says Etienne Marcuz with the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research), who was interviewed by the fact-checking team of French daily Libération's CheckNews.
While Israel has almost complete control of the Iranian airspace, the F-35s are protected against eventual attacks by the Iranian air fleet, which is also outdated compared to the Israeli army, according to these two experts.
Against this information war backdrop, a number of fake images that apparently show downed F-35 planes have been circulating online. Accounts known to criticise Israel started to share images of debris they said came from an F-35 downed in the Iranian desert, starting on June 13.
We ran these images through a reverse image search (see our handy guide to find out how you can do it, too) and discovered that the photos did indeed show a F-35 crash, but it took place in May 2024 in New Mexico in the United States, as shown by articles from the time.
Accounts also circulated images taken from video games, claiming that they showed a downed F-35. A post in Arabic that garnered more than 6 million views on X used a clip from a video game uploaded to YouTube in May 2025. You can see the scene 34 seconds into the video when a fighter plane gets shot by anti-aircraft defence.
Another photo that allegedly showed a downed F-35 was broadcast on Iranian television on June 14 and picked up by a number of pro-Iran accounts that shared it widely across social media, especially Facebook. However, this photo, which was likely generated by artificial intelligence, actually shows a fighter jet that doesn't have some of the characteristics of an Israeli F-35.
The fins at the back of the plane, for example, seem to be facing the opposite direction to the F-35. Moreover, the symbol of the Israeli army – the Star of David – appears at the back of the jet in this image, though it is on the front of the Israeli F-35s. Moreover, the ground doesn't seem to be damaged at all, even though the plane is still on fire.
Another image said to show an Israeli fighter jet crashed in the desert was also widely circulated and was even shared by a number of Arabic-language media outlets like Gaza Now, whose post was viewed more than two million times.
However, a number of social media users mocked this image, which was likely generated by AI, because certain details such as the jet's engine don't match the real F-35, but the real issue is the size of the downed jet as compared to the people around it. It looks huge in the image, whereas in reality, an F-35 is only about 15 metres long and six metres wide.
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