A senior Iranian military official claimed Tuesday that Iranian-made surveillance drones have made dozens of apparently undetected flights into Israeli airspace from Lebanon in recent years to probe air defenses and collect reconnaissance data. An Israeli official rejected the account.I don't know about "dozens" of UAV flights, but there definitely were some.
The Iranian official declined to give further details on the purported missions or the capabilities of the drones, including whether they were similar to the unmanned aircraft launched last week by Lebanon's Hezbollah and downed by Israeli warplanes. It also was impossible to independently verify the claims from the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
In November 2004, Hezbollah flew a drone over northern Israel for about 15 minutes.
In April 2005, another Iranian drone was launched by Hezbollah. Here's the NBC News report:
In August, 2006, the IDF shot down a Hezbollah drone that was en route to Haifa.
So Hezbollah has been using Iranian drones for years. (There were reports that a bomb-laden drone attacked an Israeli warship in July 2006, but that was apparently a rocket.)
It is surprising that the media didn't seem to remember any of them.