Iranian media outlets reported on Friday that one of Israel’s most advanced fighter aircraft was shot down during the early morning raid that struck multiple targets within the Islamic Republic. The news has gone viral on social media, claiming that an Israeli Air Force F-35I Adir, a variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fifth-generation stealth fighter equipped with an Israeli-developed electronic warfare system, was downed by Iranian air-defense missiles.
The Israel Defense Forces has not acknowledged losing any aircraft in the opening strikes of its Operation Rising Lion, which involved more than 200 warships that dropped a significant number of munitions, disabling Tehran’s nuclear program and killing several high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists.
Questionable Photographic Evidence
There has been no confirmation of the destruction of one of the world’s most advanced fighters. However, as of Friday afternoon, several accounts tied to officials or journalists within Iran have shared images of a downed F-35. Still, others on social media claimed the photos are actually from a United States Air Force F-35A Lightning II that crashed in May 2024 near Albuquerque, New Mexico, during a flight from the aerospace firm’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility to Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Another image was reported to show an F-35 burning after being struck by an Iranian air defense system may have been an edited image of a Russian fighter that was destroyed over Syria in 2015.
Haven’t We Heard This Before?
This isn’t the first time that Iranian media has reported that an F-35I Adir was destroyed, with the news then making the rounds on social media. It was last October that reports said that Iranian missiles struck the Nevatim Air Base, the home of two F-35I squadrons, and that the base and all its aircraft were “completely destroyed.”
As was the case last October, it is likely Iranian state media presented a fictional narrative and employed operatives on social media to share the story, helping it go viral. Experts have suggested this is part of a coordinated misinformation/disinformation campaign on Tehran’s part, partially to draw attention away from the damage and destruction it incurred in its most recent engagements with Israel.
False News From Official Sources
Iran’s proxies, including the Yemen-based Houthi militants, have also regularly made claims of striking and seriously damaging U.S. warships, shooting down American military aircraft, and even driving the U.S. Navy out of the Red Sea. Each of those reports originated in “official” channels but was amplified on social media, in part because few in the West are likely to monitor Iranian or Yemeni media outlets, but increasingly rely on social media as their primary source of news.
This serves to rally those with anti-Western sentiments, while also sowing confusion. Americans who have come to distrust the mainstream media may even believe the reports and become further skeptical that the stories aren’t being covered on the nightly news or via cable news outlets.
Some Truth In All The Lies
Another consideration is that these reports circulate because there is a wishful thinking that they could be true. The Houthis, for example, did come worrisomely close to striking a U.S. Air Force F-35 earlier this spring while the aircraft was taking part in the Operation Rough Rider aerial campaign against the Tehran-backed group.
The U.S. military didn’t acknowledge the incident until The New York Times reported it, but that was only after posts on social media already claimed as much. It was also this spring that a Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fell off the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) after the ship was forced to make an evasive maneuver to avoid being hit by an incoming missile.
The Pentagon was quick to report the loss of the Super Hornet, but it may have had a choice. In the social media era, it is impossible for such information to be hidden. That fact has been evident in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Even when the Kremlin hasn’t acknowledged that its fighter or other aircraft were shot down, its military bloggers have confirmed the losses.
That comes as Russian media, both its official channels and social media feeds, have also been overzealous in their claims. Such was the case two years ago when reports circulated on social media that the first German-supplied Leopard 2 main battle tank to Kyiv was destroyed in the fighting. It turned out that wasn’t the case, but the claims continued until one was destroyed. The Kremlin hyped that loss as well as the subsequent destruction of the British-made Challenger 2 and American-made M1 Abrams MBTs.
Yet, the false claims may have compromised the propaganda value of the actual destruction, as it was difficult to discern whether the reports were merely more misinformation. All of this is also a reminder that the old saying, “the truth is the first casualty of war,” still rings true.
