Jalil Zandi, a skilled pilot of the F-14 fighter jet, had two hits with his Sidewinder missiles on eight French-made Mirage fighters during an engagement with Saddam's bombers over Khark, Iran. This incident took place in the 1980s when F-14 pilots from Iran had shot down more than 100 of Iraq's jets. The F-14 was a superior aircraft, equipped with advanced radar systems and Phoenix guided missiles, which could target a plane from 100 miles away. Zandi was considered one of the most exceptional pilots to have flown the F-14, having downed a total of eight enemy planes, along with three probables, making him the top air ace ever to have flown the Tomcat. However, the story of the Shah's pilots remains largely hidden as they fought for Iran, which was the enemy of the United States.
The F-14 was produced by Grumman Aerospace, an American aircraft engineering marvel. In the 1960s, the US Navy was looking for an aircraft that was fast enough to intercept the enemy, nimble enough to win in a dogfight, and light enough to land on an aircraft carrier. Grumman's "swing wing" F-14 design, which entered service in 1972, was the answer to the US Navy's requirements. The F-14's expansive bubble canopy provided excellent visibility, and its cockpit seated two, with the radar intercept officer sitting behind the pilot, monitoring a terminal that could track up to 24 targets at once, providing the pilot with regular updates on the evolving state of the airspace. The F-14's wings could be rotated over 40 degrees aft, providing impressive maneuverability at subsonic speeds. At supersonic speeds, the wings could be swept back to reduce pressure and drag, enabling the F-14 to reach speeds above Mach 2.
The development of the F-14 was marred by cost overruns, and at one point Congress even considered canceling it. However, it was saved by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, who was an important ally of the US at the time. In the mid-1970s, the Shah placed a $2 billion order for 80 F-14s, along with hundreds of Phoenix missiles, in an agreement known as Persian King, which was the largest single foreign military sale in US history. The US also agreed to train Iranian fighter pilots, and Iranian military aviators traveled to the Miramar naval base in San Diego, where they trained with Navy instructors. The F-14 Tomcat repeatedly proved its superiority over other aircraft, such as the F-15 Eagle and F-4 Phantom, in simulated dogfights.
However, in 1979, the Shah was overthrown, and the Ayatollah came to power. The US then became wary of providing military assistance to Iran. As a result, the battle to keep the Iranian F-14s in the air became a shadow war fought among smugglers, arms dealers, spies, and customs agents. Despite the challenges, Iran was able to keep its F-14s operational, although the aircraft was phased out in the Iranian Air Force in the 2000s.
The story of Jalil Zandi and the F-14 is a testament to the engineering and technological advancements of the aircraft, as well as the skill of the pilots who flew it. The F-14 proved to be a superior fighter jet, capable of engaging multiple targets at once and bringing down an enemy plane from a distance of 100 miles away. The story of the F-14 also highlights the importance of strong international relations between countries and the role of military alliances in ensuring global stability.
Iran’s F-14 fighters, famously featured in the movie Top Gun, played a crucial role in the Iran-Iraq war. Although the F-14 was designed and produced by the US, Iran was able to maintain its fleet of F-14s through various means, including buying parts on the black market and smuggling components out of the US. These methods were necessary, as the US had cut off military aid to Iran in the wake of the Iranian revolution. Iran also faced problems with maintaining its F-14s, as the planes required extensive maintenance, and a lack of spare parts led to many grounded planes. Despite these challenges, Iranian pilots were able to score numerous kills against Iraqi aircraft throughout the war. Military analyst John Stillion called the conflict “the largest air war fought anywhere in the world in the past 50 years”.
While the manufacturer of the F-14, Grumman, had given the Iranian ground crews extensive training on F-14 maintenance, the US had deliberately withheld some information, such as details about the plane’s avionics. In addition, American technicians sabotaged some of the Phoenix missiles before leaving Iran following the revolution. These actions made it difficult for Iran to maintain its F-14s. However, within a few days of the invasion, the Iranian Tomcats were flying again.
Iran faced other challenges in keeping its F-14 fleet operational. The F-14 was a finicky aircraft that required extensive maintenance; every hour spent in the air required at least 40 hours of ground-crew maintenance. Many components, such as the actuators for the wings, electronics for the radar, grease for the gun, and spares for the tires, required continuous replacement. The twin Pratt & Whitney TF30 turbofan engines, designed for the F111 bomber, were also problematic. The engines were not appropriate for the aerial acrobatics required of a fighter jet and were a frequent source of accidents. More than 40 US planes were lost due to engine trouble. “The TF30 is just a terrible engine,” former United States Secretary of the Navy John Lehman once told Congress. “I guess the good news is that all the Iranian F-14s have the TF30, too.”
Despite these issues, Iranian pilots were able to score numerous kills against Iraqi aircraft. The first-ever combat kill in an F-14 was scored on September 7, 1980, when a Tomcat pilot downed an Iraqi Mil Mi-25 helicopter with 400 rounds from its Vulcan gun. The Iraqis’ Soviet-made MiG-21 and MiG-23 aircraft proved helpless against the Tomcat’s high-tech weapons platform, and the kills mounted throughout late 1980. Over the course of 34 years of service, from 1972 to 2006, American F-14 pilots shot down only five enemy aircraft, while Iranian pilots claimed 159 kills during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war alone.
Iran faced challenges in obtaining spare parts for its F-14 fleet, as the US had cut off military aid to Iran following the revolution. Iran was able to secure spare parts from a variety of sources, including independent Israeli arms brokers, who were able to flip F-14 parts they’d secured from American dealers at high prices to Iranian customers. However, when Hezbollah, a fundamentalist militia based in Lebanon, began firing rockets inside Israel’s borders, the Israeli channel closed. Iran also obtained spare parts from an unlikely source: the Reagan Administration. In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration began diverting some of the money from the Iranian arms sales to fund a secret (and illegal) effort to overthrow the government.
Bakersfield-Based Petroleum Engineer Caught Smuggling Military Aircraft Parts to Iran
In a major bust, law enforcement officials have arrested an Iranian-born petroleum engineer based in Bakersfield, California, for smuggling military aircraft parts to Iran. The engineer, Saeed Homayouni, a Canadian citizen, worked at a local oil company and lived in a modest apartment, with no apparent romantic or social life. However, Homayouni was using the alias Sid Hamilton and had been faxing requests to aircraft-parts brokers for price quotes on military components, which he purchased under the guise of civilian aviation components or consumer electronics.
Homayouni's scheme came to light in 1999 when a vendor contacted the authorities with a tip. Investigators, including agents Pinchetti and Duarte, suspected that Homayouni's brother, Soroosh, based in London, was shuttling money between Bakersfield and Tehran using a front company called Multicore Ltd. Duarte and Pinchetti watched as FedEx and UPS delivered a stream of F-14 and other aircraft components to Homayouni's apartment for months. These included F-14 air-duct intake seals, a harness for an F-14 fuel indicator, components for an ejector seat, and even a portion of an F-14 cockpit canopy. Although the deliveries came with an official federal warning that the part was under export control, Homayouni continued his illegal operations.
After securing the parts, Homayouni would scrub off any labeling that would identify their military origins and place them in a storage locker. Using a rented mailbox, he would ship the parts to Singapore, filing false customs declarations claiming that they were low-value civilian aviation components or consumer electronics. From there, the parts made their way to Iran, with the assistance of Soroosh's Singapore-based girlfriend.
Pinchetti and Duarte arrested Homayouni in December 2000 after watching him for almost two years. The evidence against him included discarded faxes retrieved from his trash. At the time of his arrest, Homayouni had two storage lockers full of aircraft components, and a subpoena of his bank records showed that he had ordered more than $2 million worth of military aircraft parts over a single 13-month period. Another bank account had $1.4 million stashed inside. Homayouni served two years in prison and was subsequently deported, but it is unclear whether he was a spy or merely a profiteer.
This bust highlights the high margins on F-14 parts, which have attracted opportunists, even flamboyant ones like Arif Durrani, a Pakistani arms dealer twice convicted of violating the U.S. arms embargo on Iran. Durrani, who claimed that his sale of missile parts to Iran was authorized by Oliver North, opened a restaurant in Mexico and began recruiting Americans to act as fronts to purchase aircraft parts on his behalf, including a retired Department of Defense intelligence officer. Unlike Homayouni, Durrani was improvising arms deals on the fly. He used brokers who never had the parts and found them elsewhere, often needing refurbishing, which they sold for a massive profit. Cole estimated that Durrani made about 20 times profit on the deals without ever leaving his restaurant in Mexico. Despite being convicted twice, Durrani remains a free man.
In 2005, Pakistani national, Durrani, was apprehended by Mexican authorities for an unrelated immigration issue and was ordered back to Pakistan. United States authorities intervened and arranged for Durrani's flight to be routed through Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), where he was subsequently arrested by US Customs agents and charged with conspiracy for his role in smuggling aircraft parts into Iran. During his trial, Durrani, who owned Aerospace Logistics, tried to claim that his business was a furniture company. However, he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
By the mid-2000s, enforcing the Iran embargo had become a priority for law enforcement agencies. A small office led by agents Pinchetti and Duarte had grown into a team of about a dozen agents, including intelligence analysts and CIA liaisons. However, despite these resources, Pinchetti felt that the government was not taking the smuggling seriously. In one case, after the resolution of the Homayouni case, the government seized the smuggled aircraft parts but then auctioned them back to the public. Pinchetti was sometimes unsure whether he was investigating an organized spy network or prosecuting junkyard hustlers. In 2006, the last big case of his career, Pinchetti uncovered the resale of high-grade accelerometers from Hamilton Sundstrand, which were valued at around $110,000 each. The Iranians coveted these accelerometers, which were built to withstand incredible g-forces and were suitable for use in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Using two informants from a previous case, Pinchetti led a sting operation against the buyer, Colonel Jamshid Ghassemi of the Iranian military. Pinchetti suspected that Ghassemi was targeting American military surplus sales networks. Ghassemi was too smart to come to the US and operated out of Bangkok. After Pinchetti's informants convinced him to wire $70,000 to an American bank account as a down payment, Ghassemi was arrested by Thai authorities and incarcerated. Most of Pinchetti's targets quickly pleaded guilty and cooperated with the authorities in exchange for leniency, but Ghassemi refused to crack. He remained in a Thai jail for almost two years as Iran and the US engaged in a legal battle over his extradition. Pinchetti postponed his retirement and travelled to Thailand to witness Ghassemi in court in 2008. Pinchetti saw a tall man in his 50s, whom he believed to be the architect behind the smuggling network, but who refused to say anything. The American extradition request was ultimately denied, and Ghassemi was promoted to general by Iran Watch, an independent monitor.
In June 2007, a military base on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, saw the destruction of a retired F-14 Tomcat. The US Navy had retired all remaining Tomcats the year before, but instead of placing them in a museum or selling them to private collectors, they ordered their destruction. This was due to concerns that the public could purchase fighter jet parts and ICBM components from military surplus dealers. This revelation was a turning point, as it finally caused the government to take the parts trade seriously and enforce regulations more stringently.
In a move to ensure that no F-14 fighter jets would ever again be used, dozens of them were shredded into little 2-by-2-foot bits over the course of two weeks. This symbolic yet practical gesture was part of a nationwide effort to seize F-14s from museums and private collectors and remove any sensitive components from them. Even the heavily reinforced landing gear, designed to brace the F-14 upon landing on an aircraft carrier, was cut in half with a demolition torch. Tim Shocklee, who managed the demolition, explained that "there were things getting to the bad guys, so to speak," suggesting that the destruction was intended to prevent the use of the planes by hostile forces.
Fast forward to today, and Iran has shifted its focus from fighter jets to killer drones. Since the 2007 lockdown, Iran has been under an embargo that prevents it from acquiring new military technology, but the country has managed to obtain embargoed American components through smuggling networks. According to Damien Spleeters of Conflict Armament Research, who conducted teardowns of Iranian suicide drones used by Russia in Ukraine, over 82% of the more than 500 different components found in three UAV models were made in the U.S. This revelation underscores the challenges faced by those trying to enforce the embargo and prevent Iran from acquiring new military capabilities.
However, while Iran may be projecting power abroad with its drone technology, it is struggling with civil unrest at home. Iranian protesters have taken to the streets to demand reforms, facing lethal force, torture, and public executions from the regime in response. The Ayatollah's boyhood home was set on fire by protesters in November, and the Iranian national soccer team declined to sing the national anthem at the World Cup. In the face of this unrest, the Iranian Air Force has kept the F-14 flying, using it for its propaganda value more than its military value.
In 2015, Iranian engineers released photographs of the overhauled F-14s, demonstrating the advanced state of the self-sufficiency jihad. The Phoenix missile had been recreated and rebranded as "the Fakour," and sensitive avionics and computer components had been mostly re-engineered. In Syria that same year, two F-14s accompanied a Russian-made Tu-95 on a bombing run, making them the last known survivors of their species. While the military value of the F-14 may be questionable in the modern era, Iran's ability to keep them flying serves as a potent symbol of the country's self-sufficiency and defiance in the face of external pressure.
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