The new Iranian-designed and produced fighter aircraft, the Sa'eqeh.

Beijing
IN THE MIDST of recriminations over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, the Iranian head of state has sent signals this past week that rather than trying to find a diplomatic solution with Washington and its European allies he will continue to maintain a defiant and belligerent stance over Teheran's weapons programs.

The latest in a series of "messages" being sent to the West is the news reported this past week of Ahmadinejad presiding over a military parade that featured a cornucopia of weapon systems now in the hands of the Iranian armed forces. Among these was a new Iranian-designed and produced fighter aircraft, the Sa'eqeh (Lightning), which had just begun series-production in August according to Iran's official state news outlets.

Amadinejad told the crowd, which was assembled to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, that "those (countries) who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken."

His statements were in reference to the embargo on Teheran for all sales of arms, spare parts, or any other military technology--sanctions that have existed since the overthrow of the Shah's government by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Since that time Iran's armed forces have struggled to keep an ever-aging arsenal of U.S. weaponry functioning, almost all of which was purchased under the Shah more than

Being cut off from any legal means of supporting this military hardware put Iran in a difficult spot when Iraq decided to wage war on the new Islamic Republic, and forced its defence industry to become as self-sufficient as possible. The Sa'eqeh is the culmination of almost 30 years of effort to achieve that self-sufficiency.

The Iranian president boasted that "those who prevented Iran, at the height of the war [with Iraq] from getting even barbed wire must see now that all the equipment on display today has been built by the mighty hands and brains of experts at Iran's armed forces."

However, do not rush to write your congressional representatives to suggest that Washington respond to this new threat by doubling the U.S. Air Force's buy of Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor fighter jets. A closer look at the aircraft shows that its primary significance is symbolic--the first military aircraft to ever be designed and produced in Iran--and that it is not a modern-age weapon system.

The Sa'eqeh is based almost entirely on the old Northrop F-5 fighter aircraft, the chief U.S. export fighter of the 1960s and 70s, 166 of which were sold to Iran before the revolution. After the embargo was initiated the Iranian armed forces were able to purchase spares through illegal channels and on the arms black market since the F-5 had been widely exported to numerous nations friendly to the United States and there were any number of parts depots around the world.

In one case Iran was able to purchase F-5s and a large stock of spare parts from Ethiopia. The African nation had initially purchased the aircraft from Vietnam. The communist government in Hanoi had captured these aircraft from the South Vietnamese air force when they took Saigon, but had no use for them since the new, re-united Vietnam's arsenal was almost all of Soviet make and design.