Israel’s ability to achieve air superiority over Iran during its recent 12-day conflict has been contrasted with Russia’s inability to gain control of Ukraine’s skies and the US’s failure to do the same during its recent attacks against Yemen’s Houthi fighters.
To be sure, in its surprise attack on Iran, Israel reaffirmed the value of old-school air superiority, even in the age of ballistic missile and drone warfare.
“Just ask yourself, would you want to be Ukraine or Israel?” Douglas Birkey, the executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Middle East Eye.
“Ukraine has zero ability to scare the sky for offensive or defensive purposes. It’s stuck in WWI-style attrition conflict while Israel had entré to do what it wanted in the battle-space,” Birkey added.
But analysts say that despite some trying to draw comparisons, all three conflicts are uniquely distinct, and drawing connections could in fact be misleading. This is especially true with the Iran-Israel outcome more uncertain, and the countries both moving to address their vulnerabilities.
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According to Andrew Curtis, a retired air commodore in Britain’s Royal Air Force and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, the “comparisons in terms of the technology and battle space are apples-to-oranges”.
First, Iran’s US-supplied air force quickly decayed after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. So 40 years later, Israel knew it didn’t have to worry about Iranian pilots, whereas Ukraine still had 55 operational fighter jets from Soviet days when Russia invaded in early 2022.
Ukraine’s air defence systems – mainly S-300s and Buk batteries – were intimately familiar to the Russians. However, they failed to capitalise on this knowledge and take them out early – a misstep that military analysts say Moscow is still paying the price for.
Under US guidance, the Ukrainians dispersed their air defences, making it harder for the Russians to locate them. Ukraine was then backed up with US-made Stingers and, more recently, precious Patriot air defence batteries.
Israel learned from Russia’s early failures by knocking out Iran’s air defences on the opening day of the war, experts said.
They reportedly used teams of Mossad agents with drones smuggled into Iran and fifth-generation modified F-35 warplanes to stay in the sky without refuelling to disable Iran’s mix of domestic air defence, and Russian and Chinese equipment.
‘If you can find, you can kill, and if you can hide, you can survive’
– Andrew Curtis, former air commodore, Royal Air Force
Once Iran’s air defences were knocked out, Israel’s more vulnerable non-stealth F-15s and F-16s were able to roam Iran’s skies.
The key for Israel was intelligence collection.
“No one expected the F-35 to be shot down by Iran’s air defences,” Curtis told MEE.
“But it was Israel’s ability to hunt down Iran’s batteries and destroy them to clear the path for more vulnerable aircraft that was key. Israel spent decades collecting intelligence on Iran’s defences, whereas the Russians did not with Ukraine.”
Some experts expressed surprise at how quickly Israel was able to achieve air superiority over Iran, noting that the US was unable to do so against Tehran’s allies, the Houthis in Yemen. Between January 2024 and May 2025, when US President Donald Trump struck a truce with the Houthis, the group was able to shoot down at least 19 US Reaper drones.
“The Iranians and the Houthis have the same equipment,” Birkey told MEE. “In that sense, we should not underestimate how impressive Israel’s performance was.”
Of course, drones are easier to shoot down than jet fighters. And again, it came down to intelligence collection, experts say.
“Houthi air defences have not been an intelligence collection priority for the US,” a US defence official told MEE on the condition of anonymity.
That leaves an opening for Iran now, as it looks to rebuild its defences, experts say.
Can Israel maintain its air superiority?
Sources told MEE last week that Iran was moving to rebuild its air defences and had purchased Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries since its ceasefire with Israel last month.
According to the analysts, if it can plug its intelligence gaps and better disperse those systems, it will be harder for Israel to achieve air superiority next time.
“It’s all about hiding and finding,” Curtis told MEE. “If you can find, you can kill, and if you can hide, you can survive.”
A former senior US official told MEE that he was sceptical Iran would learn from its mistakes.
“The ayatollah still thinks he killed 200 American soldiers at al-Asad because that’s what his people told him,” the former US official said, referring to Iran’s 2020 strike on a US base in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. No American deaths were reported as a result of the largely symbolic strike.
“Say what you want about Israel, but I promise you the military will have an intense debate about the shortfalls of their ballistic missile defence internally. Iran is unlikely to have the same,” the former senior US official added.
Israel used its air superiority to knock out Iranian ballistic missile launchers on the ground. It claimed to have destroyed half of them during the conflict.
Despite this, and a tiered air defence system backed up by American Terminal High Altitude Area Defence batteries and missile destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean, Iran was able to send missiles into Israeli cities right up until a ceasefire was reached.
Iran receives Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries after Israel ceasefire deal
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The Telegraph reported last week that Iranian missiles directly hit five Israeli military facilities.
Iran’s ability to do so did not go unnoticed in the region, particularly in the Arabian Gulf, where the US’s allies have energy infrastructure and glitzy towers with no similar American air defence backstop.
Still, Birkey said the sheer volume of Iranian missiles fired at Israel underscored that Israel’s US-supported air defence “was more effective than many people would have guessed from the get-go”.
“The weakness is that it is an enterprise where you are at risk of running out of your magazine depth. We only have so many interceptors and the ability to produce them,” he said.
Having achieved air superiority over Iran once, Israel now faces its own dilemma.
Air superiority is not static. Maintaining it over a small country like Lebanon, where Israel is tracking Hezbollah’s movements with drones, is easier than in vast Iran.
One of the Islamic Republic’s first moves after the ceasefire in June was to try to rout out Israeli spies.
“Hunting missile launchers is really hard. You need someone detecting them – that’s spies or persistent ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance),” Fabian Hinz, a defence and military researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told MEE.
With Iran receiving SAM batteries from China, Israel faces a new dilemma: whether to strike them or not.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrapped up a visit to Washington last week, which US and Arab officials tell MEE appeared to be an effort to obtain US buy-in for more strikes on Iran instead of negotiations.
“I would predict the Israelis would prevent the Iranians from establishing another air defence network unless they are deterred by the US,” the former senior US official told MEE.
