In a rare public concession, the head of Iran’s state broadcasting corporation has admitted that the military’s dramatic claims of shooting down two Israeli F-35 fighter jets during Operation Rising Lion were entirely false.

Peyman Jabali, chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), told students at Shahid Beheshti University that IRIB merely repeated information fed to it by military officials and had no independent way to verify the claims. His remarks were reported Tuesday by Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.

“Were we in the sky to witness the fighter jet crash? Were we behind the defense system?” Jabali said. “Someone from the military officials informed us, and then they eventually realized… that the information was not credible.”

He acknowledged the false reporting had undermined IRIB’s reputation, warning that “media officials should not make their credibility dependent on the credibility of other institutions.”

The revelation marks one of the clearest public acknowledgments from a senior Iranian official that Tehran knowingly broadcast fabricated battlefield victories during the recent conflict with Israel.

Jabali also used the forum to issue sweeping claims about Israel’s intentions and Iran’s military resilience. He claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believed the Islamic Republic would collapse after Israel bombed IRIB facilities on June 16. According to Jabali, Israel suffered devastating losses during the confrontation, including a supposed collapse of its “entire computing system,” assertions for which he provided no proof.

He further blamed “internal signals of weakness” inside Iran for encouraging Israeli miscalculations, arguing that domestic critics who highlight the regime’s vulnerabilities inadvertently embolden its enemies.

“That false image was not created only by the Zionist regime’s think tanks,” Jabali said. “We created it internally.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)