Two colonels died when an Iranian fighter jet went down near Firouzabad, about 770 kilometers south of Tehran, state media reported. Col. Hamid Reza Ranjbar and Col. Manouchehr Pirzadeh were flying a test flight after the aircraft had been overhauled.
The report did not name the type of jet or give a cause. Footage from the Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the military, showed white smoke rising from the wreckage.
An aging fleet
Iran’s air force flies a mix of planes bought from the United States before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, among them the American-made F-14 Tomcat, alongside Russian MiG and Sukhoi models. Many are decades old.
Western sanctions have made spare parts hard to get. Keeping such aircraft in the air has been a struggle for years, and the record shows it.
In 2022, a fighter jet crashed in Iran’s central desert and both pilots died. Earlier that same year, another jet came down on a soccer field in Tabriz. Both pilots were killed, along with a civilian.
Tehran still keeps its American and Russian planes in service. The mix reflects where the country has found suppliers over the decades. The latest crash adds to concern about the safety of Iran’s military aviation, and the report tied those problems to the sanctions that remain in place.
