If the U.S. House of Represenatives gets its way, only museums will be able to buy pare parts for the F-14 aircraft, a move meant to prevent Iran from maintaining its fleet of F-14s. As Flight reports:
The ban, which was originally a separate measure called the “Stop Arming Iran Act,” was added to a $646 billion bill to fund the US military in the financial year beginning on 1 October.
The House approved the legislation on Thursday, but a Senate vote is still needed.
The US Defense Department is conducting a voluntary review of F-14 parts to determine whether it could sell any on the surplus market without jeopardising national security. Iran is the only country known to be trying to keep F-14s flyable.
When I was in Tehran earlier this year, one Iranian I spoke with suggested that the U.S. knew all along that Iran was the likely destination for F-14 parts and chose to look the other way so that defense companies could proft from the sale (after all, Iran is the only country still flying the aircraft). That's far-fetched, but given how strict U.S. defense export regulations are, one has to wonder how the F-14 parts made it through the interagency review process without someone raising a red flag.
