Israel is the first country in the world to have flown the U.S.-made F-35 stealth fighter jet in combat, the commander of the Israeli air force said on Tuesday in remarks carried by the IDF's official Twitter account.
Local media further quoted Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin as saying in a speech to the chiefs of 20 foreign air forces convening in Israel: "We are flying the F-35 all over the Middle East and have already attacked twice on two different fronts."
Norkin also presented a photograph of an Israeli F-35 overflying Beirut.
Manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp, the F-35 is also known as the Joint Strike Fighter and, in Israel, by its Hebrew name "Adir" (Mighty).
Israel was the first country outside the United States to acquire the F-35. In December 2016, it received the first two planes out of an order of 50. According to Israeli media, at least nine have been delivered since.
Recalling the May 10 attack on Israel, which prompted the most aggressive Israeli response in Syria in decades, Norkin noted that the "More than 100 Syrian anti-aircraft missiles were fired at our aircraft during our attack in Syria about two weeks ago."
"We monitored what the Iranians were doing around us," Norkin continued. "The Iranian Quds Force established a presence at the [Syrian] T4 base, just 220 kilometers [140 miles] from Israel. They tried to attack with an unmanned aircraft that infiltrated Israel several months ago."
"After that incident, we noted that they were continuing to store weapons at that base, including the air defense systems we targeted in the last month," he went on to say. "In recent weeks we realized that Iran has supplied Syria with long-range missiles and rockets as well as Uragan rocket launchers, which we targeted north of Damascus."
He then said that the Iranians had fired 32 rockets at Israel, not 20 as the IDF initially reported. The air force commander noted that Israeli forces intercepted four of the projectiles, and the remainder fell outside Israeli territory.
"That's when we hit more than 20 Iranian targets in Syria. Sadly, the Syrian air defense systems fired more than 100 anti-aircraft missiles at us. In response, we destroyed their anti-aircraft batteries," he said. "Shortly after that, we hit and destroyed a Hamas attack tunnel that had been dug 20 meters [70 feet] underground."
