Something changed in the region last December, when Israel declared its first squadron of F-35s operational. The Israeli Air Force’s (IAF) 140 (“Golden Eagle”) Squadron has just nine F-35I Adir aircraft, scheduled to grow to fifty over the next three years. What matters here is that neither Iran nor Syria are likely to get the most advanced Russian fighters or antiaircraft missiles (it took Iran ten years before it received Russian S-300 long-range anti-aircraft missiles in 2017).
