What Remains of the Glorious Iranian Air Force of the Shah's Era?

Iran is a country built on the legacy of the Persian Empire. With a history of 2,500 years, Iran has been ruled by monarchy almost all the time, except for the years when the Khomeini regime, in other words the mullah regime, which came to power with the revolution in 1979, ruled. The prominent families of Iran have always been content to live with the monarchy and have avoided the struggle for democracy and/or the transition to a republican regime as seen in many other countries. For this reason, whatever has happened in the name of change in this country, the central government has been at the centre of it all.

Through all these changes, Iran's geography and basic identity have remained unchanged. Today, Iranians live more or less within the same borders as their great-grandparents did. Iran is twice as large as Turkey, three times larger than France and six times larger than Britain. Iran has a social structure identified with both Shiism and Islam, and with its pre-Islamic history, especially with the Sassanids, Achaemenids and Parthians. The poet Firdavsi and his Shahnameh also constitute the essence of Iranian national identity. The national consciousness among Iranians dates back to long before the modern era. Despite the existence of this consciousness, the word "state" had a structure identical with the meaning of the Shah's rule. 

Reza Shah, who said, "There is only room for one Shah in Iran and that Shah will be me", seized power in a coup d'état on 21 February 1921. Building his new state on two main pillars, the army and the bureaucracy, Reza Shah brought the infrastructure of Western-style modern life to his country, similar to what his contemporary Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had done, except for the governance model. Reza Shah was overthrown by the nationalists in 1941, but in 1953 his son, in a counter-coup backed by the CIA and MI6, removed the nationalists from power and restored the Shah's rule, which favoured the interests of the oil cartels of the Anglo-Saxon world. On the other hand, this coup identified the new Shah with the British, the Anglo Iranian Oil Company and the imperialist powers. In other words, in an age of republicanism, nationalism, neutrality and socialism, the Shah Pahlavi monarchy meant secession and inevitably rapprochement with imperialism, multinational capitalism and the West. Indeed, the unruly roots of the 1979 revolution could be traced back to the Anglo-American-backed coup d'état of 1953. The coup had prepared the ground for the replacement of nationalism, socialism and liberalism by Islamic 'fundamentalism'.

Without prejudice to this, I would like to discuss the investment in the Iranian Air Force during the reign of Shah Pahlavi and try to understand why the Iranian attack on Israeli territory on 13 April 2024 with missiles and kamikaze drones was (not) carried out using fighter jets. 

After the coup, Iran's oil revenues increased from $34 million in 1954-1955 to $20 billion in 1975-1976. In these years, 70 per cent of the state's revenues came from oil sales. Iran had literally turned into an oil state. In the 1970s, with the quadrupling of oil prices after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Pahlavi dynasty began to invest in the Iranian Army, one of the three pillars (the army, the bureaucracy and the courtiers) that sustained its power. By 1975, the Shah had at his disposal the largest navy in the Persian Gulf, the largest air force in West Asia and the fifth largest army in the world.

The Iranian Army was equipped with 1,000 modern tanks, 400 helicopters, 28 hovercraft, 2,500 maverick missiles, 225 F-4 Phantom fighter jets, 166 F-5 fighter jets, 79 F-14 fighter jets and 10 Boeing 707 transport aircraft. In those years, Iran was one of the countries that made the largest arms purchases in the world. In 1975, the United States, which had imposed an arms embargo on Turkey because of the Cyprus Operation in 1974, was trying to supply Iran with weapons. Even in 1978, one year before the revolution, the Shah continued to expand the Iranian Army. He placed a $12 billion arms order. If the new orders were fulfilled, Iran would be the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf as well as in the Indian Ocean. In addition to 160 F-16, 80 F-14 and 209 F-4 aircraft, the Shah ordered 3 destroyers and 10 nuclear submarines. He had also signed treaty agreements with Western Europeans to build nuclear facilities on Iranian territory. The Shah also planned to spend about 33 billion dollars to build 20 nuclear reactors by 1994.

From a budget of $60 million in 1954, by 1977 the Iranian Army had the privilege of using an enormous budget of $7,200 billion. However, this seemingly powerful army was not enough to suppress the opposition led by Khomeini, and the Shah was easily overthrown. In 1979, Khomeini replaced Shah Pahlavi and began to rule his country, armed with constitutional powers unimagined even by the Shahs.

While the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 provided the state with the opportunity to expand and consolidate the new regime, it also led to the meltdown of the Iranian Army, which had been built during the Shah's reign, with the effect of falling oil prices. Although Saddam's intention at the outset of the war between the two countries was to seize the Shatt al-Arab, at the end of eight years he had gained nothing. This war weakened Iran and paved the way for Saddam's downfall. 

Today's Iranian Air Force has 63 F-4, 41 F-14, 35 F-5E, 13 F-5B, 24 MiG-29, 23 Su-24, 17 Chengdu F-7, 17 Mirage F-1 and 2 YAK-130 aircraft in its inventory. In addition, the order of 24 Su-35s given to Russia is expected to be completed within a year or two. Meanwhile, the Iranian Aerospace Industries HESA is trying to realise some fighter aircraft development projects through reverse engineering. For example, the F-5 derivative HESA Suegch is one of them and only 6 units could be produced. Again, 3 Kevser aircraft with similar features have been produced. Although 6 Iranian-made indigenous fighter aircraft Azarakhsh have been produced, no one has seen this aircraft in the air. In today's conditions, Iran cannot purchase fighter jets from any country other than Russia, which it supported in Ukraine, and perhaps China in the future, and its Air Force is far from a modern air force. Iran, which is experiencing great difficulties in terms of the number of fighter aircraft and the operational ratios of the available aircraft, has found the solution in developing surface-to-surface ballistic and cruise missiles and turning to the construction of simple unmanned aerial vehicles. In this way, approximately 170 kamikaze drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles were used in the attack on Israeli territory on the night of 13/14 April. I believe that Iran, which is observed to have reached a competent level in this field, still does not have an inventory and air power structure that can handle a major war when we look at it from the point of view of the Air Force. I think that Israel, which is aware of this, will continue to fight directly with armed groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which are allegedly supported by Iran, instead of attacking Iran (except to prevent it from having nuclear weapons capacity), and will not carry the war to Iranian territory.