It seems that iron smelting preceded the bronze age in the middle east by several hundred years. Early iron wasn’t very good metal and it made sense sticking to bronze as long as you could afford it and had access to tin and copper)
You're absolutely right. Though I don't understand why this idea persists - even in academic scholarship. It has been proven decades ago that non-meteoric iron was smelted in the Early Bronze Age. Though the main reason bronze was used for so long appears to be because it was actually cheaper than iron. Smelting iron required the burning of an absurd amount of trees, which was extremely expensive.