Ironically, the United States had sold 80 Tomcats to Iran back in the 1970s when they were still considered allies.
Then, in March 2007, federal agents confiscated four F-14s after they were found to have not been appropriately demilitarized and erroneously sold to private companies in “unauthorized deals.” Three of the planes came from two different air museums in Chino, California (sold to them for $4,000 each), while the fourth had been used as a prop for the TV show “JAG.”
Nothing criminal was uncovered, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) still considered it a massive vulnerability and believed it was possible that parts from these old planes, which the buying parties swore were acquired legally, could be stripped off and sold through obvious gaps in surplus military auctions and illegally exported.
A massive effort was made to track down and destroy as many of the 633 Tomcats made for the Navy that still existed. Hundreds were chewed up and scrapped at the military’s “boneyard” for retired aircraft at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. Overall, the proceed was viewed as symbolic as the F-14s were technologically obsolete by then, with one former White House deputy chief of counterterrorism comparing them to old Chevrolets still used in Cuba.
Some ninety Tomcats live in air museums around the country, and it’s believed that as many as fifty (but perhaps as few as a dozen) may still exist in Iran.
