A report on Iran–Iraq War and Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force

In the 1980s, F-14s were used as land-based interceptors by the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force during the Iran–Iraq War, where they saw combat against Iraqi warplanes.

The type has seen action in a large number of armed conflicts involving several of its operators, including the Western Sahara War, the Paquisha War, the Cenepa War, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, the South African Border War, the War in Afghanistan, the Chadian–Libyan conflict, the 2011 military intervention in Libya, and the Northern Mali conflict.

Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force seized 24 F1BQs and F1EQs flown over from Iraq, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As of December 2021, 12 Mirage F1EQs and 5 Mirage F1BQs were in service.

The MiG-23 took part in the Iran–Iraq War and was used in both air-to-air and air-to-ground roles.

On 11 August, one of the new MiG-23MLs shot down the F-14 flown by IRIAF Colonel Hashem All-e-Agha with an R-60MK missile over the Persian Gulf.

Israeli Phantoms saw extensive combat in several Arab–Israeli conflicts, while Iran used its large fleet of Phantoms, acquired before the fall of the Shah, in the Iran–Iraq War.

As of 2021, 63 years after its first flight, the F-4 remains in active service with the air forces of Iran, South Korea, Greece, and Turkey.

After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the new Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) was partially successful at keeping Western fighters in service during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s and the simple F-5 had a good service readiness until late in the war.

The history of the Iranian Air Force, currently known as the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, can be divided into two phases—before the Islamic Revolution, and after it.

After the 1979 Iranian revolution, some of these planes were not in working order due to a lack of necessary spare parts, because of an American arms embargo and damage sustained on the aircraft during the Iraqi invasion (Iran–Iraq War).

The air force's peak came after the long Iran–Iraq War, which ended in 1988, when it consisted of 1029 aircraft of all types (of which 550 were combat aircraft), becoming the largest air force in the region.

On the first day of the war, formations of Tu-16/22s, Su-20s, MiG-23s and MiG-21s, for a total of 166–192 aircraft, performed surprise airstrikes on 10 airbases of the Iranian Air Force, succeeding in destroying a large of number of fighter-bomber aircraft on the ground, but not enough to knock the Iranian Air Force out.

The H-3 airstrike was a surprise air attack by the Iranian Air Force during the Iran–Iraq War on 4 April 1981 against the airbases of the Iraqi Air Force at the H-3 Air Base in western Iraq.

Operation Scorch Sword was a surprise airstrike, carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force on 30 September 1980, that damaged an almost-complete nuclear reactor located 17 km southeast of Baghdad, Iraq.

The operation took place eight days into the Iran–Iraq War.

Operation Alborz, more commonly known by the code-name Operation Kaman 99 (عملیات کمان 99), was an operation launched by the Iranian Air Force in retaliation to Iraqi surprise aerial attacks on Iran the day before which marked the beginning of the 8-year-long Iran–Iraq War.