Tehran, Iran–Iran will begin to receive the first batch of Russian SU-35 fighter jets next week, according to Mehr News Agency.
Tehran and Moscow have embarked on deepening cooperation amid massive Western sanctions. Iran and Russia have signed major deals in recent months to boost economic, trade, energy and military cooperation.
The news was broken by Iran’s Persian-language media, which did not elaborate on the details of the shipment. The SU-35 is a fourth-generation fighter jet designed primarily for air superiority roles.
Over the past months, there have been media reports of Iran receiving the SU-35 planes from Russia.
Iran’s permanent mission at the United Nations confirmed in March that the country had finalized a deal to purchase the aircraft. Iranian media reports at the time said 24 units of the plane were to be supplied to Iran.
Shahriar Heidari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, told Tasnim news agency in January that the jets were to arrive in the current Iranian calendar year, which began on March 21.
Heidari said Iran will also receive air defense systems, missile systems and helicopters from Russia in the near future.
Iran has not acquired any new fighter aircraft in recent years, excluding a few Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters it bought in the 1990s.
Besides the MiG-29, IRIAF mainly uses locally modified F-4 Phantom II, F-14 Tomcat, and F-5E/F Tiger II planes from the 1970s that the toppled US-backed Pahlavi regime received before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.