Flush With F-5 Fighters in the 1970s, Iran Was America's 'Aircraft Carrier in Asia'
308 F-5s is a lot of F-5s
In the 1970s, Iran acquired so many Northrop F-5 fighters from the United States—308 in all—that it could afford to sell or donate many of the nimble supersonic to other countries.
Israel’s air war on Iran in June destroyed air defenses and missile production facilities across the country. It also targeted some old Iranian air force fighters on the ground, including at least two Grumman F-14s parked at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport.
“Iran’s fighter jets were largely irrelevant,” one Israeli report noted. “Most stayed on the ground or flew to protect their own bases, avoiding any dogfights. Apart from a few limited strikes on these bases, Israel left the Iranian air force alone.”
In recent years, Iran has staked the future of its air force on acquiring Sukhoi Su-35s from Russia. It reportedly ordered and paid for 50 Su-35s but hasn’t received any as of this writing. In the aftermath of the devastating Israeli air campaign, Tehran may well turn to China, instead—and seek Chengdu J-10C fighters.
Flash back 50 years. In the 1970s, the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi purchased enormous numbers of advanced American aircraft, including F-5s, F-14s and McDonnell Douglas F-4s.
In the mid-’70s, military hardware was quite literally “piling up on Iranian docks and fields,” American investigative journalist Jack Anderson observed.
“Iranian air crews simply can’t be trained fast enough to operate all the aircraft that the eager Shah has thrust upon them,” Anderson wrote in September 1975. “They were just learning to fly the F-4s when the Shah began buying F-5Es. Before the F-5E crews are broken in; the still more advanced F-14s will begin arriving.”
The Shah even agreed to transfer some of Iran’s F-5s to other countries.
During the Indo-Pakistani war of December 1971, the administration of U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon quietly urged allies, including Iran, to transfer American-made weaponry to Pakistan. While that attempt was futile, it did set the stage for future arrangements between the White House and the Shah.
“The idea took root in the White House that Iran could serve as an American aircraft carrier in Asia, a sort of giant regional arms dump and landing pad from which U.S. firepower could be quietly and quickly inserted and extracted at will,” historian Andrew Scott Cooper wrote in his 2011 book The Oil Kings.
“Asking the Shah to do favors for them meant that Nixon and Kissinger could bypass U.S. domestic law, avoid scrutiny from the media and the Congress, and avoid explaining their actions to the American public.”
Iran would fulfill that function during Operation Enhance Plus, a U.S.-organized transfer of American military equipment to the armed forces of South Vietnam ahead of the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973. The U.S. requested Tehran make 32 of its F-5As available to Saigon.
An Oct. 27, 1972 telegram from the U.S. embassy in Tehran to the U.S. State Department reasoned that “32 F-5As can be spared from the Iranian air force, but loss of another 16 would hurt” Iranian preparedness.
In return for the timely provision of F-5As for South Vietnam, the U.S. sped up the provision of replacement F-5Es for Tehran, aiming to deliver 32 by March 1974.
“In doing so, the first aircraft to be delivered worldwide and the first squadron to be activated will be for Iran and we are giving Shah priority over all other country purchasers/recipients, including Vietnam,” read a Dec. 4, 1972 embassy telegram to the State Department.
“Shah will get all of initial production for [the U.S. Air Force] and Vietnam, except those essential for [operational test and evaluation] and training,” the telegram added.
As Iran acquired newer F-5Es, it parted with more of its older F-5As. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfers database, Tehran supplied 38 F-5As to Jordan in 1974 and 1975—the king of Jordan once received a “gift” of 25 F-5s for free from the Shah—and 10 to Greece. It also supplied a small number of F-5As to Ethiopia.
No more re-exports
The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran deposed the Shah and transformed Iran from a U.S. ally into a staunch adversary. In the months following the Shah’s flight, the emergent Islamic Republic proposed selling back the 79 F-14s Iran received before the revolution. Then, in September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran.
Iran could afford to sell off dozens of warplanes in the 1970s. Conversely, in the 1980s, it welcomed any planes it could acquire from anywhere. In that desperate decade, Tehran acquired small numbers of Shenyang J-6 and Chengdu J-7 fighters from China.
It also received small numbers of additional American fighters, namely five F-5s and four F-4s sourced from Ethiopia. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful politician in the Islamic Republic and later Iran’s president after the war, lauded the acquisition. “We bought F-4 and F-5 fighters, much to the dismay of America.”
The SIPRI database doesn’t mention Iran acquiring F-4s in the 1980s—although it does list an Iranian acquisition of seven F-5As and three F-5Es from Ethiopia in 1985.
Still, these procurements paled in comparison to the former regime’s buildups in the 1960s and 1970s. In a bid to partially rectify that, Iran acquired approximately two dozen Mikoyan MiG-29s from the Soviet Union shortly after the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988.
It also kept a small number of Iraqi fighters that flew to Iran to evade destruction by the U.S.-led coalition in 1991. Those ex-Iraqi aircraft also included four MiG-29s, which Baghdad had only pressed into service in the final weeks of the eight-year war with Iran, as well as 24 French-made Dassault Mirage F.1s.
It was Iran’s last significant fighter acquisition. Domestically, it produced small numbers of three different F-5 derivatives beginning in the 1990s—the Azarakhsh, Saeqeh and Kowsar.
In the 2000s, Russia delivered a paltry six subsonic Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes. More recently in 2023, it sent a couple of Yak-130 trainers and light attack aircraft. Neither type is a substitute for a modern fighter.
In an echo of its re-exports in the 1970s, in 2014 Iran delivered a small number of Su-25s to Iraq to help Baghdad fend off the rampaging Islamic State militant group. Ironically, those same planes previously flew for Iraq … until escaping to Iran in 1991.
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