March 17, 2023
Both Iran and Russia have confirmed that Iran has signed a contract to buy Russian Sukhoi-35 fighter jets, which will give Iran the most modern combat planes in its inventory.
The announcements, however, did not say how many planes Iran would buy, what they would cost or when they would be delivered.
Earlier news stories have spoken of Iran getting 24 Sukhoi-35s that Russia built for Egypt, which then changed its mind and declined to buy any.
The Sukhoi-35 has a list price of $43 million each, which would make for a purchase price of just over $1 billion for the lot of 24.
If the Egyptian jets are what Iran is buying, Tehran will likely get a discount, and it will be able to get them quite soon as they are already built. If Iran is to get made-to-order planes, it will not likely get any for more than a year.
Twenty-four planes would not make much of a difference militarily. The six Arab states across the Persian Gulf from Iran collectively own or have on order 923 modern combat planes Saudi Arabia alone owns 290 US-made F-15 fighters that most consider to outclass the Sukhoi-35.
The Sukhoi-35 first flew in 2008 and is now the only combat plane in production in Russia. Russia has rarely sent the plane into combat over Ukraine, apparently fearing Ukraine’s air defenses. That means it lacks a combat record from which to make judgments about it.
The announcements that Iran was buying the Su-35 were made March 10. No other weapons purchases were announced. Iran had been rumored as possibly buying Russia’s S-400 air defense missile system, the most modern such system in the world. But Iranian Defense Minister Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani said March 6 that Iran had no interest in the S-400, saying that its own homegrown Bavar-373 air defense system made Iran self-sufficient in air defense equipment.