Iran’s Russian-made S-300 missile system has been unable to thwart Israeli air strikes.

Since Israeli forces first launched attacks to destroy Iran’s nuclear bomb-building capabilities last Friday, they have maintained a daily drumbeat of punishing strikes.

But as Israeli jets continue to streak through the skies, it’s not just Iran’s supreme leader that will be nervous.

In Moscow, the rapid collapse of their strategic ally’s air defences – several of them supplied by Russia itself – will also have Vladimir Putin’s military chiefs rattled, according to experts.

The initial attacks used a combination of ground sabotage, long-range missile strikes and some 200 jets, including American-made F-35s, F-16s and F-15s, to successfully wipe out surface-to-air missile launchers, military bases, munition factories and nuclear sites.

These strikes involve round trips of about 2,000 miles for manned aircraft, requiring air-to-air refuelling over neighbouring Syria.

Yet so far, not a single Israeli aircraft has been downed and Iran’s Russian-supplied systems appear powerless to stop the Israeli Air Force (IAF).

“Israel essentially has complete air supremacy – there is nothing Iran can do to stop what they want to do from the air,” says Francis Tusa, an independent defence analyst.

“When’s the last time we saw air supremacy like this? I think it would actually be from Israel again in 1967 [during the Six Day War], and before that, probably the Allies in 1944 over Germany.

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“You are talking about an integrated air and missile defence system, previously talked up by the US, being taken down in just 72 hours. Israel’s drones are just flying race tracks above Tehran, in broad daylight.”

Exposing weaknesses

For defence analysts, it is another sign that Russian-made air defence systems, long feared by the Nato alliance, may not be as formidable as they seemed.

There have already been signs of this in Ukraine, where Kyiv has shown it can launch British-made Storm Shadow missiles hundreds of miles into Russian territory.

The Ukrainians have also flown American F-16 jets in contested territory that is covered by the Russian air defence network.

Tusa says: “There is now a very valid question of: ‘is this Russian stuff actually as good as we all thought it was?’”

Iranian air defences rested upon a mixture of both indigenous and Russian-made hardware, including radar systems, Iranian fighter jets and surface-to-air missile batteries.

They also included some F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft, purchased from the US before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which could be scrambled to take down threats.

Iran’s domestically-made weapons including Bavar-373 and Khordad-15 mobile missile launchers have been bolstered by Russia’s long-range S-300 mobile missile batteries and the Rezonans-NE radar system designed to detect stealth jets and ballistic missiles from hundreds of miles away.

The regime’s upgraded S-300s, acquired from Moscow over the past two decades, were reported to have been destroyed by Israel last year in separate strikes. But overall, Tehran’s defences were still thought to be impressive.

James Black, of the Rand Europe research institute, says that in practice “the recent Israeli attacks on Iran – and previous strikes in October 2024 – have exposed the limitations of Iran’s air defences in the face of co-ordinated air strikes by Western-manufactured aircraft” including F-35 jets.

By 2030, it is expected that European countries will have more than 400 F-35 jets alone stationed at their airbases across the Continent.

“It will add to the awkward questions that Ukrainian strikes within Russia have already raised about the true potency of Russia’s own integrated air defence system,” Black says.

Justin Crump, a former Army commander with expertise in aviation warfare who now runs the consultancy Sibylline, says most Nato countries had long assumed that Russia’s air defences are formidable enough to keep them out for weeks or months in the event of a conflict.

Yet that edifice is now crumbling. And besides being militarily concerning, it could end up hurting Russian arm sales internationally as well – potentially to the benefit of China.

Russia has sold weapons to countries including China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran and others over the years. But Crump says the recent conflict between India and Pakistan showed off the effectiveness of Islamabad’s Chinese-made J-10 jets, which took down at least two Indian fighters.

“If people are looking at results and thinking the Russian stuff hasn’t performed as advertised, I suspect a lot of nations might shift towards seeing what China can offer them,” he adds.

‘Full throttle’

But Nato countries might want to hold off celebrating for now, Crump warns.

Israel’s own strikes against Iran were partly made possible by reported sabotage, conducted by spy agency Mossad, which saw undercover operatives launch low-cost drones laden with explosives at expensive missile launchers and aircraft.

These tactics were strikingly similar to those used in Ukraine’s “Spider’s Web” attack against bombers stationed deep in Russian territory.

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“It shows you that the other way air defences can get knocked out in this day and age is by someone who has a drone nearby and flies it into the radar or the cab of the launch vehicle,” says Crump.

“I would ask: is Nato ready for that sort of shift?”

For Tusa, the Israeli air campaign is also a product of formidable planning and training, as well as impressive munition stockpiles that enable them to fire hundreds of missiles every week.

It is a far-cry from Britain’s own depleted reserves, which ministers are currently scrambling to replenish.

“In air campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, our air campaigns have actually been very low-tempo,” Tusa adds.

“What the Israelis have shown is that if you’re going to do something like this, you need to start at full throttle and then keep going.

“You don’t want to look inside your munitions bunker and have to say ‘boss, things are looking a bit bare at the moment’.”

For now, though, it is Iran and Russia that seem to have been put on the back foot.