Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Mehdi Farahi said today, Tuesday, in statements to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency, that Iran has already completed preparations to receive the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets and military helicopters that it obtained from Russia.
This acquisition, which represents a strengthening of relations between the two countries since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, aims to modernize the Iranian Air Force, which possesses a few dozen Soviet and North American fighters, all of which were acquired before the Islamic Revolution. 1979.
Farahi said: “Plans for Sukhoi Su-35 fighters, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters and Yak-130 training aircraft to join the combat units of the Iranian army have been completed.”
In 2018, Tehran announced that it had begun production of its Iranian-made Kowsar fighter to strengthen its air power, and it is a local copy of the North American F-5 aircraft, according to military experts.
At the beginning of last September, the same Tasnim agency announced that the first Russian-made aircraft had begun arriving in Iran, but they were not yet a Sukhoi Su-35, but rather a Yak-130. The photos showed at least two of these training aircraft at a base in Isfahan already bearing the insignia of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force.
Tasnim did not provide any Russian confirmation of the agreement.
Information that Iran will acquire 24 Su-35 fighters from Russia was published in January by the Commander of the Iranian Air Force, Brigadier General Hamid Vahidi, and MP Shahriar Heydari, a member of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.
Delivery of the devices, which were manufactured for Egypt but never purchased, was supposed to begin in the middle of the year Think tank Stimson center.
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