Good shot. No spare parts yet still flying.
Excerpt only, details in link below:
Tehran turned to the black market, paying huge sums to shady middlemen to sneak F-14 parts into Iran. American authorities became aware of the illicit trade as early as 1998. In March of that year, federal agents
arrested Iranian-born Parviz Lavi at his home in Long Island, charging him with violating U.S. export law by attempting to buy up spare parts for the F-14’s TF-30 engine and ship them to Iran via The Netherlands. Lavi
got five years in prison plus a $125,000 fine.
The arrests came in a steady drumbeat. In 1998, an aircraft parts vendor in San Diego
told U.S. customs officials that Multicore Ltd. in California had requested price information for air intake seals used only on the F-14. Agents arrested Multicore’s Saeed Homayouni, a naturalized Canadian from Iran, and Yew Leng Fung, a Malaysian citizen.
“Bank records subpoenaed by the Customs Service showed that Multicore Ltd. had made 399 payments totaling $2.26 million to military parts brokers since 1995 and had received deposits of $2.21 million,”
The Washington Post reported. The company shipped parts mostly through Singapore.
The feds began investigating 18 companies that had supplied airplane components to Multicore.
In September 2003, U.S. authorities
nabbed Iranian Serzhik Avasappian in a South Florida hotel as part of a sting operation. Agents had shown Avasappian several F-14 parts worth $800,000 and arrested him after he offered to buy the components.
“While these components may appear relatively innocuous to the untrained eye, they are tightly controlled for good reason,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement interim agent Jesus Torres said in a statement. “In the wrong hands, they pose a potential threat to Americans at home and abroad.”
Even with U.S. authorities tamping down on the illicit trade in F-14 parts, Iran persisted. After shutting down Multicore, the feds confiscated the firm’s Tomcat components and sent them to the Defense Department’s surplus-parts office.
In 2005, a company — allegedly Iranian — bought the very same parts from the military.
The parts war escalated after the U.S. Navy retired its last F-14s in 2006, leaving Iran as the type’s only operator. In 2007, U.S. agents even
seized four intact ex-U.S. Navy F-14s in California — three at museums and one belonging to a producer on the military-themed T.V. show JAG — charging that the F-14s had not been properly stripped of useful parts that could wind up in Iranian hands.
Even so, the underground trade in Tomcat parts continues, with shady companies scouring the planet for leftover components. In early 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
investigated Israeli arms dealers that it said had twice tried to send F-14 spares to Iran.
Five decades in, Iran’s F-14s are only getting better and better. And more and more important to the Persian state’s defense.
nationalinterest.org
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