Are American Concessions Funding Iran’s Quest To Rebuild Its Air Force?
FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICYMIDDLE EAST
July 10, 2022
It was morning in the central Iranian city of Isfahan when a loud boom shook windows and stopped Iranians in their tracks. Smoke rose on the horizon. Rasoul Motamedi, the army’s regional spokesman sought to dispel rumors quickly. “The F-14 fighter plane suffered a technical malfunction this morning and the pilot and co-pilot landed by parachute… The F-14 was destroyed,” he declared. Just over 40 years ago, President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger traveled to Tehran to meet the shah. The Iranian monarch was increasingly upset at Soviet overflights of Iranian territory. Nixon and Kissinger were upset that the Soviet Union had the month before sealed a Treaty of Friendship with neighboring Iraq. During the meeting, the leaders hashed out a deal for Iran to purchase state-of-the-art F-14 Tomcats, at the time, the world’s most advanced fighter jet.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution interrupted Iran’s armament. At the time of the shah’s ouster, Iran had 79 F-14s in its physical possession. The F-14 never gave Iran the dominance it sought. Many Iranian pilots training in the United States when the shah fell remained in America rather than risk imprisonment or execution, especially as Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime suspected every air force officer was a royalist.
The Iran-Iraq War, the occasional crash, decades of sanctions, and the cannibalization of some aircraft to provide parts for the remaining fleet have eroded Iran’s stable of F-14s.
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/are-american-concessions-funding-irans-quest-to-rebuild-its-air-force-2/
