Iranian F-14 Tomcat achievements

The F-14 was only ever exported to Iran under the Shah, 79 were delivered between 1976 and 1979 and shortly after the Iranian Revolution and the seizure of American hostages in their embassy in Tehran, shortly afterwards the US and the west put aside the rules that govern how states behave by aiding Saddam Hussein in his bloody war against Iran and spreading propaganda one of the most famous ones to this day was the status of Iran's fleet of F-14's, which were told be sabotaged and left useless.

These lies changed from the whole IRIAF being inactive by 1984 and the air war remaining "uninteresting" according to US sources, however the post revolution Iranian air force the IRIAF had;

scored the first kill for an F-14 in September of 1980 against an Iraqi Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship using it's Vulcan cannon!

Managed to service and maintain the Tomcat's air frame and keep a hefty amount of the fleet active throughout the war, this was a big burden considering they were under complete arms embargo from most of the world and the F-14A's they had had the TF30 engines which were a problem even for the IIAF!

Shot down over 159 adversaries, and saw more air to air combat than the entire USAF and US Navy saw in the Vietnam War!

However as the US mainstream media made several claims sometimes contradicting each other, for instance in 1987 stating Iran no longer even had an air force which was followed by an engagement (one of several over the course of the war) in which a single F-14 downed a MiG-23 in plain sight and scarred off the rest!

After nearly 20 years of declaring the IRIAF dead and not a threat the US Navy had all of their F-14's destroyed to ensure Iran didn't get spare parts for their air force, proving how much of threat the US considers the "long dead" IRIAF to be!