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Yithian

Parish Watch
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Fascinating stuff throughout (brief sponsorship spiel excepted) with a YouTube comments section that isn't actually a complete waste of time!

The Spies and Arms Smugglers Who Kept Iran’s F-14 Tomcats Flying​

The U.S. sold Iran dozens of its most capable jet—then spent decades chasing the spies and arms dealers smuggling the parts needed to keep it flying. BY STEPHEN WITTPUBLISHED: MAR 2, 2023

[LENGTHY DISCUSSION OF HOW IRAN CAME TO ACQUIRE AND OPERATE THE JETS]

Lack of spares led to many grounded planes. “‘During the war, we tried to maintain 60 F-14s in operational condition,” one pilot told Cooper and Bishop. “At first, we more or less managed that, but on average we usually kept between 40 and 45 Tomcats combat ready.” As the war of attrition dragged on, the need grew acute. In 1982, Iran declared a “self-sufficiency jihad,” recruiting engineers and technicians to build simpler parts like brake discs and tires. But the F-14 also required complex computer and avionics components that the self-sufficiency jihadists couldn’t easily replicate. For those parts, the only place to turn was the United States.

Fortunately for Iran, the market for military aircraft parts was surprisingly unregulated. This was true even for F-14 parts, despite the fact that the plane was only ever operated by the U.S. Navy and the Iranian Air Force. With just two potential customers—sworn enemies, no less—a brisk trade developed. And although the U.S. retired the plane in 2006, somehow, nearly 50 years on, the Iranian Air Force has kept the F-14 aloft.

Some of the earliest suppliers to the Iranian Air Force were Israelis. This was certainly odd, as the Iranian regime had cut off all ties with Israel in 1980 and publicly referred to Israel as the “Zionist entity.” Still, in the early 1980s, independent Israeli arms brokers were able to flip F-14 parts they’d secured from American dealers at high prices to Iranian customers. But Iran was also sponsoring Hezbollah, a fundamentalist militia based in Lebanon, and when Hezbollah began firing rockets inside Israel’s borders, the Israeli channel closed.

Iran was also able to secure spare parts from an even stranger source: the Reagan Administration. Readers of a certain age may remember the Iran-Contra affair, one of the more complex political scandals in American history. In 1981, Ronald Reagan had begun secretly negotiating with the Iranian regime, offering to trade arms for several American hostages being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 1985, Col. Oliver North, a decorated Marine Corps veteran working for the Reagan administration, began diverting some of the money from the Iranian arms sales to fund a secret (and illegal) effort to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. The revelation of North’s activities led to his dismissal—and months of congressional hearings. In 1987, Reagan appeared on national television and admitted that he’d repeatedly authorized sales of arms to Iran in exchange for cash and the release of hostages. Some of those arms sales included F-14 components.

After the scandal, the U.S. did not directly supply Iran with parts. But neither did it do a very good job of securing the large number of spares it manufactured for the Navy. In fact, for a long time, responsibility for enforcing the U.S. aircraft-parts embargo fell mostly to two individuals, operating on their own initiative out of a federal office in San Diego. Their names are David Pinchetti and Wendy Duarte, and together they were the Mulder and Scully of the Iran embargo.

Pinchetti had begun his law enforcement career as a watchdog with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, rooting out corrupt defense contractors who were defrauding U.S. taxpayers. After a number of successful bribery and bid-rigging convictions, he turned to busting smugglers in the late 1990s. Duarte, a U.S. Customs agent, joined him on a two-person task force. From the beginning, Pinchetti was astonished by the stupidity of the U.S. military surplus disposal approach. Most parts were disposed of through public auctions, run by an obscure federal agency called the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service. “The Navy had all these very expensive components. They’re not really flying the aircraft anymore, but they still put them into the system,” he said. “And the only country that was still flying one of these things was Iran!”

Duarte and Pinchetti’s first major case was that of Saeed Homayouni, an Iranian-born petroleum engineer based in Bakersfield, California. Homayouni, a Canadian citizen, worked a quiet job at the local oil company, lived in a modest apartment, and had no obvious romantic or social life. In his spare time, he’d fax requests to aircraft-parts brokers, seeking price quotes for military components. (While such parts were subject to export controls, at the time there were few restrictions on domestic trade.) When the parts arrived, Homayouni would sign for them using the alias Sid Hamilton.

Pinchetti and Duarte’s investigation into Homayouni began in 1999, when a concerned vendor sent the two a tip. After a little digging, Pinchetti and Duarte came to suspect that Homayouni’s brother Soroosh, based in London, was shuttling money between Bakersfield and Tehran, using a front company called Multicore Ltd. Soroosh was clumsy, and he had been investigated by U.S. Customs before. In Bakersfield, Saeed Homayouni had been more careful, and may have been operating the scheme for years.


CONTINUED AT LENGTH:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a42859545/iran-f-14-tomcat-spies/
 
Last edited:
Fascinating stuff throughout (brief sponsorship spiel excepted) with a YouTube comments section that isn't actually a complete waste of time!

The Spies and Arms Smugglers Who Kept Iran’s F-14 Tomcats Flying​

The U.S. sold Iran dozens of its most capable jet—then spent decades chasing the spies and arms dealers smuggling the parts needed to keep it flying. BY STEPHEN WITTPUBLISHED: MAR 2, 2023

[LENGTHY DISCUSSION OF HOW IRAN CAME TO ACQUIRE AND OPERATE THE JETS]

Lack of spares led to many grounded planes. “‘During the war, we tried to maintain 60 F-14s in operational condition,” one pilot told Cooper and Bishop. “At first, we more or less managed that, but on average we usually kept between 40 and 45 Tomcats combat ready.” As the war of attrition dragged on, the need grew acute. In 1982, Iran declared a “self-sufficiency jihad,” recruiting engineers and technicians to build simpler parts like brake discs and tires. But the F-14 also required complex computer and avionics components that the self-sufficiency jihadists couldn’t easily replicate. For those parts, the only place to turn was the United States.

Fortunately for Iran, the market for military aircraft parts was surprisingly unregulated. This was true even for F-14 parts, despite the fact that the plane was only ever operated by the U.S. Navy and the Iranian Air Force. With just two potential customers—sworn enemies, no less—a brisk trade developed. And although the U.S. retired the plane in 2006, somehow, nearly 50 years on, the Iranian Air Force has kept the F-14 aloft.

Some of the earliest suppliers to the Iranian Air Force were Israelis. This was certainly odd, as the Iranian regime had cut off all ties with Israel in 1980 and publicly referred to Israel as the “Zionist entity.” Still, in the early 1980s, independent Israeli arms brokers were able to flip F-14 parts they’d secured from American dealers at high prices to Iranian customers. But Iran was also sponsoring Hezbollah, a fundamentalist militia based in Lebanon, and when Hezbollah began firing rockets inside Israel’s borders, the Israeli channel closed.

Iran was also able to secure spare parts from an even stranger source: the Reagan Administration. Readers of a certain age may remember the Iran-Contra affair, one of the more complex political scandals in American history. In 1981, Ronald Reagan had begun secretly negotiating with the Iranian regime, offering to trade arms for several American hostages being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 1985, Col. Oliver North, a decorated Marine Corps veteran working for the Reagan administration, began diverting some of the money from the Iranian arms sales to fund a secret (and illegal) effort to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. The revelation of North’s activities led to his dismissal—and months of congressional hearings. In 1987, Reagan appeared on national television and admitted that he’d repeatedly authorized sales of arms to Iran in exchange for cash and the release of hostages. Some of those arms sales included F-14 components.

After the scandal, the U.S. did not directly supply Iran with parts. But neither did it do a very good job of securing the large number of spares it manufactured for the Navy. In fact, for a long time, responsibility for enforcing the U.S. aircraft-parts embargo fell mostly to two individuals, operating on their own initiative out of a federal office in San Diego. Their names are David Pinchetti and Wendy Duarte, and together they were the Mulder and Scully of the Iran embargo.

Pinchetti had begun his law enforcement career as a watchdog with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, rooting out corrupt defense contractors who were defrauding U.S. taxpayers. After a number of successful bribery and bid-rigging convictions, he turned to busting smugglers in the late 1990s. Duarte, a U.S. Customs agent, joined him on a two-person task force. From the beginning, Pinchetti was astonished by the stupidity of the U.S. military surplus disposal approach. Most parts were disposed of through public auctions, run by an obscure federal agency called the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service. “The Navy had all these very expensive components. They’re not really flying the aircraft anymore, but they still put them into the system,” he said. “And the only country that was still flying one of these things was Iran!”

Duarte and Pinchetti’s first major case was that of Saeed Homayouni, an Iranian-born petroleum engineer based in Bakersfield, California. Homayouni, a Canadian citizen, worked a quiet job at the local oil company, lived in a modest apartment, and had no obvious romantic or social life. In his spare time, he’d fax requests to aircraft-parts brokers, seeking price quotes for military components. (While such parts were subject to export controls, at the time there were few restrictions on domestic trade.) When the parts arrived, Homayouni would sign for them using the alias Sid Hamilton.

Pinchetti and Duarte’s investigation into Homayouni began in 1999, when a concerned vendor sent the two a tip. After a little digging, Pinchetti and Duarte came to suspect that Homayouni’s brother Soroosh, based in London, was shuttling money between Bakersfield and Tehran, using a front company called Multicore Ltd. Soroosh was clumsy, and he had been investigated by U.S. Customs before. In Bakersfield, Saeed Homayouni had been more careful, and may have been operating the scheme for years.


CONTINUED AT LENGTH:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a42859545/iran-f-14-tomcat-spies/
Fascinating that. :hoff:
 
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