{"id":2626,"date":"2026-03-04T09:25:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/2626\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T09:25:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:25:27","slug":"israel-f-35-downs-iranian-yak-130-in-first-dogfight-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/2626\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel F-35 downs Iranian YAK-130 in first dogfight of war"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Israeli F-35I<\/a> downed an Iranian YAK-130 in the first fighter jet dogfight of the war, the IDF<\/a> announced at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

The Russian-made YAK-130 started production in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

It is generally used as an advanced training aircraft for pilots of the more advanced Russian SU-57 and other such aircraft, but can also be used as an attack aircraft.<\/p>\n

On Sunday afternoon, the IDF had bombed<\/a> Iranian fighter jets moments before they could take off.<\/p>\n

Two fighter jets, one an F4 and one an F5, were already out on the runway and preparing to take off when the IDF struck.<\/p>\n

Iran’s air force,<\/a> including the F4 and F5 fighters, is mostly antiquated and no real match for Israel’s F-15s, F-16s, and F-35s, but the YAK-130 is more advanced than some of the others.<\/p>\n

Any Iranian fighter jets could be problematic for Israeli and American drones and generally complicate the battle space, making it harder for close-range “stand-in” attacks.<\/p>\n

Israel and the US established general air supremacy in the Tehran area, where they can carry out stand-in attacks, hovering above potential targets unimpeded for an extended period, within the first two days of the conflict.<\/p>\n

The last time the Israeli Air Force shot down an aircraft was on November 24, 1985, during an aerial engagement over Lebanon. In that clash, an Israeli Air Force F-15 \u201cBaz\u201d downed two Syrian MiG-23 fighter jets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Israeli F-35I downed an Iranian YAK-130 in the first fighter jet dogfight of the war, the IDF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2092,513,2090,423,217,37,214,215,212,92,2091],"class_list":{"0":"post-2626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-f-35","9":"tag-fighter-jets","10":"tag-iaf","11":"tag-idf","12":"tag-iran-israel","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-israel-iran","15":"tag-israel-iran-war","16":"tag-operation-epic-fury","17":"tag-operation-roaring-lion","18":"tag-war-with-iran-scenario"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116170190128424548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}