The Israeli military has said very little about the drone and hasn’t indicated if it knows more than it is revealing.
After a few days, the Lebanese Hezbollah announced it had dispatched the drone, which it said it got from Iran. Days later, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi confirmed that Iran had built the drone and given it to Hezbollah.
The main theme pursued by Iran and Hezbollah was that the drone’s penetration of Israeli airspace proved how weak and defenseless Israel really is, brushing aside the evidence of a half-dozen Israeli-Arab wars in which Arab aircraft did not get into Israel.
The Israelis said they detected the drone as it flew over the Mediterranean and let it continue flying over the Gaza strip and into Israel in order to observe it and try to figure out its purpose. When the drone was finally over the Negev desert and away from any populated area, one of the F-16I fighter planes following the drone was ordered to shoot it down.
Subsequently, Israeli teams poured over the desert picking up pieces.
Israel has not said if it knows what the drone was up to. The US McClatchy newspapers quoted one Israeli official as telling it, “We are studying the drone now to learn more about what it accomplished and what Hezbollah intended with it.”
The drone carried no weapons and was a spy drone according to Hezbollah. But no one has said if the drone carried a television camera that radioed pictures back to Hezbollah or if it was carrying a film camera and was supposed to return to Hezbollah with pictures.
Hezbollah has not released any photos nor even claimed that it has any.
The Jerusalem Post said the drone was downed 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, it is widely assumed in Israel that the drone was trying to film that site, but why it would want to do so remains unclear. Iran and Hezbollah can get photos of Dimona from commercial satellites.
The Sunday Times of London, not a very good source of information about Iran, claimed the drone was photographing “secret” military bases in Israel, the Dimona reactor and preparations for an upcoming Israeli-American joint military exercise.
Others said they believed the major purpose of the drone flight was simply to observe how Israel would respond to a penetration in order to be better prepared for a possible attack mission in the future. That might also explain why Israel chose not to shoot it down at the first opportunity
Defense Minister Vahidi said Hezbollah had the right to fly drones over Israel in response to the regular violations of Lebanese airspace by Israel. Ignoring the fact that the drone was shot down, Vahidi said the penetration proved that Israel couldn’t survive a major operation mounted against it.
Israel said this was the third Iranian-made drone sent over Israel by Hezbollah in the last few years. It said this drone, however, was much larger and presumably more capable than the earlier ones.
Iran’s PressTV and Fars news agency both said the drone flew “hundreds of kilometers into Israeli airspace.” At its widest point, Israel is only 135 kilometers across and most of the country is far less than 100 kilometers across.