The F-35 shootdown was an incident of the 2026 Iran war that John Kiriakou treated as the clearest single refutation of the war’s official account of itself.
Footage circulated showing an F-35 being hit by Iranian ground fire. The first response was disbelief — “at first, people were saying, ‘No, it’s AI. It’s a stealth fighter. They’re invisible.’” Kiriakou’s summary is flat: “No, the Iranians hit it.”[1]
Confirmation came from the Pentagon, which released a statement that the pilot had made it back to an airbase in the Middle East and was in stable condition — wounded badly enough to be admitted to hospital.[1][2]
The unanswered question
What interested Kiriakou was the silence around it: “nobody is saying why, how the Iranians — whom, to use the president’s word, we have obliterated, he said it twice yesterday — how they were able to hit an invisible plane that is the art of the American force.”[2] The claim he is measuring it against is treated at the obliteration claim.
On why the pilot did not eject, his explanation was the aircraft rather than the man: “probably because he didn’t want the Iranians to get the plane. They would turn it over immediately to the Russians and the Chinese and then we’re screwed.”[3]
The incident sits underneath his general verdict on the campaign, recorded at air wars are overrated.