'Old school' tactics

“The successful F-5 strike, and another reported F-4 strike attacking another US base using glide bombs, showed how the IRIAF continued to train its pilots to fly very low in order to increase their survivability and therefore their chances of getting to their targets,” Farzin Nadimi, a defense and security analyst and Senior Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me in an interview.

“In this case, they also exploited the fog of war and gaps in air defense coverage to press ahead with striking most likely the very base that particular pilot had been trained to strike,” Nadimi said.

“The established U.S. bases in the region are supposed to be able to defend against any aerial targets, including crewed aircraft, but the available systems probably were not up to the task of fully detecting and tracking extremely low-flying fast aircraft.”

During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the American-made air force inherited by the new Islamist regime from the deposed U.S.-allied Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, gave Iran a technological edge over Iraq in the air. In addition to large numbers of McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs and F-5s, Iran was the only country in the world aside from the U.S. to operate the highly sophisticated fourth-generation Grumman F-14 Tomcat air superiority fighter.

After Iraq invaded western Iran on Sept, 22, 1980, the IRIAF promptly sprang into action. An enormous armada of 140 F-14s, F-4s, and F-5s briefly dominated Iraqi skies in Operation Kaman 99. With F-14s providing extensive air cover, F-4s and F-5s bombed several airbases and other strategic targets across Iraq for four days before reverting to a more defensive posture to prevent Iraqi ground forces from advancing deeper into Iranian territory. Later, throughout that bloody eight-year war, as Nadimi alluded, Iranian F-4s would fly at breathtakingly low altitudes just above the ground to evade Iraqi air defenses and penetrate deep inside Iraqi airspace to hit targets.

Iran seems to have replicated that tactic in the Kuwait strike.

“The IRIAF offensive tactics have always centered around low flying survivability and sneak attacks, now aided by standoff weapons that can be deployed, still from relatively low altitude, using loft/toss bombing techniques,” Nadimi said.

“I call them old school, which is understandable given the fact that they still fly aircraft built in the 1960s and 70s and train using the Vietnam War and India-Pakistan War era tactics.”

'Ambitious plan'

Drones and missiles have undoubtedly replaced the strike role that Iran’s air force once fulfilled in its heyday all those decades ago. Still, the F-5 incident and the unsuccessful Su-24 strike on Qatar, which was reportedly foiled by the Qatari Air Force, demonstrated that the IRIAF at least played a small supplementary, if not largely symbolic, role.

Nadimi, who has assiduously studied Iran’s air force for several decades, believes these early strikes were part of an “ambitious plan” to cause significant casualties and damage to the U.S. military in the region during the onset of the war.

“I am not sure what they were hoping to achieve with so few sorties and probably no base to return to except to make their squadron and base commanders look better up in the chain of command, and before the ideological commissars they answer to,” he said.

Still, the raids undoubtedly caused some damage, directly and possibly even indirectly. Nadimi doesn’t rule out the possibility that the presence of Iranian fighter jets in Kuwaiti airspace “contributed to the chain of events” leading to the friendly fire shooting down of three USAF F-15Es by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 on March 1.

Unlike the F-5 strike on Camp Buehring, the foiled Su-24 attack on Qatar was reported by CNN in those early days of the war. After the war, the Middle East Media and Research Institute published a report questioning the validity of the entire incident, stating that “all evidence shows that this reported incident apparently never happened.”

Nadimi doubts that the attempted strike was fabricated, noting that “Qatari divers found the wreckage of at least one Iranian Su-24 under the sea.” He’s unsure what their target was, but presumes it was likely Al-Udeid air base, which hosts U.S. troops. According to that CNN report, those tactical bombers were a mere two minutes away from hitting Al-Udeid before a Qatari F-15 shot them down.

Alleged Erbil strike

Iranian Army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia confirmed the strikes on April 28. Interestingly, he also said that the IRIAF attacked Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

“Our Air Force, at the beginning of the war, carried out several sorties and attacked enemy bases in regional countries, including the counter-revolutionary base in Erbil, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar,” he said, according to Iran’s state-run Press TV.

Akraminia referenced the NBC report on the Kuwait strike, boasting that the IRIAF “managed to penetrate various layers of defense that the Americans had designed there and hit the U.S. base.”

The alleged Erbil strike is noteworthy. The Kurdish capital was defended by ground-based air defenses shielding a U.S. troop base on the grounds of its main international airport, as well as the city from hundreds of drones and some missiles. Since the April 8 ceasefire, Iran has continued drone attacks against Iranian Kurdish dissident groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan, which coalition fighter jets are still actively intercepting over that region.

“It is quite possible that F-5s from Tabriz (before the air base was wrecked) bombed Iranian Kurdish groups in Erbil, probably using standoff weapons,” Nadimi said of that alleged strike.

An IRIAF strike against Erbil would have been notable. Even before the Iran war, Tehran invariably used ballistic missiles and drones against these Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraqi Kurdistan since September 2018, as well as the private residences of prominent businessmen inside Erbil city in March 2022 and January 2024. It’s not known to have used fighter jets there in any known strikes since November 1994, when IRIAF jets, most likely F-4s or F-5s, targeted Iranian Kurdish groups in Erbil province’s Koya. Of course, the IRIAF targeted Iraqi Kurdistan during the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq claimed that it had downed an Iranian F-5 carrying out a raid on Erbil in February 1987.

‘A bad shape’

Despite a few offensive sorties during this most recent war, the IRIAF remains a shadow of its former self in terms of capabilities and hardware. In the years preceding the war, Tehran had hoped to upgrade the air force with an acquisition of Sukhoi Su-35 Flankers from Russia, its most substantial fighter order since purchasing fourth-generation Mikoyan MiG-29A Fulcrums from the Soviet Union in its final days.

“The IRIAF is in a bad shape today,” Nadimi said. “Iran might press Russia for delivery of its Su-35s, but before it can happen, they will need to repair and rebuild their base infrastructure.”

“Right now, I don’t think they have the money to rebuild their Air Force.”