BBC Verify Live: Images show destroyed Iran jet and new air strikes on Tehran

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist

We’ve been speaking to experts about the latest satellite imagery showing the impact of recent Israeli strikes against Iran.

One shows a large plane obliterated at Mashhad airport, about 750km (470 miles) east of Tehran.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East specialist at Jane’s defence intelligence, says it’s a “fair assumption” the aircraft was the same Boeing KC-707 aerial tanker parked in the same area in earlier imagery.

Binnie says there “wasn’t much requirement” to destroy this plane “given the limited threat” posed by the Iranian air force.

“But it did enable the IDF to claim the longest-range strike to date and made a big fire, sending the message that nowhere in Iran is safe,” he adds.

Stu Ray, senior imagery analyst at McKenzie Intelligence Services, says if it is a KC-707 this could “catastrophically impact” the Iranian air force’s ability to operate but agrees its ability to operate against Israel is limited.

Binnie says Iran “has barely invested in the [air force] for decades with the money going to ballistic missiles, [drones], and ground-based air defence instead.”

He adds that Israel’s targeting of “all possible air threats” may suggest it is planning to eventually fly surveillance aircraft and other more vulnerable planes into Iranian airspace.

Another image shows what Maxar have described as Shahed drones stored on trailers and fighter aircraft at Dezful air force base in western Iran. None of these aircraft appear to be damaged.

Ray says the jets are “ageing F-5 Tigers” that will be in a “poor state” and “no match for the aircraft used by the Israelis”.