| Various deals have been reported to be "in the works" at various times for various countries. This instance may have been little more than artfully citing some story from some time that suited their purpose behind their article. Although when you boil it down, it really was dishonest if they knew it was an unsubstantiated story. Considering the citation was to an event supposedly started back in 1993 it seems a bit reckless at best to present it now as if it were fact.
Iran has a mix of American legacy systems from the 1960's-'70's era, FSU systems from the '80s and from Iraq, and Chinese systems from the '90s through today. I think they had a more fighter-centric approach to air defense due to our influence, but I'd say Iranian air defense today is really a matter of a bunch of point defenses spread across the country. With maybe a dozen F-14s operational, a couple dozen Mirage F1s, a few dozen MiG-29s, several dozen F-4s and several dozen more F-5s, and possibly (I'm not sure off the top of my head at 4:30 in the morning) several dozen Chinese F-7s, they have some air power, but I wouldn't picture it lasting long at all against us. Their SAMs are a mixed bag as well, with a few SA-5s, a bunch of HAWKs and a bunch of CSA-1s, and a few SA-6s and FM-80s spread across the country. Their radar coverage comes from some old American EW radars and command and control equipment and some new Chinese radars and command and control equipment. and also is spotty. Personally, I'd rather fly against Iranian air defense than Syrian, for example. Syria has far more systems covering a much smaller area, and so has much more dense coverage than Iran.
Displacedjim
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