I agree that Iran's end goal should be to acquire modern jets with technology transfers, with the jets being made in Iran.
BUT... Iran's airforce is in danger of becoming quickly obsolete in the near future and I'm not talking about compared to the USA. Even against regional rivals Iran's airforce is barely a threat anymore. Every jet has a life span and many of Iran's fighter jets are near, at the end or even past theirs.
Assuming that Iran does get the opportunity to buy a large number of fighter jets from Russia, we have to take Russia's previous lack of commitment into consideration (S-300). With that in mind I believe that it would be in Iran's best interest to get a significant portions of the jets into Iran's possession as soon as possible, regardless of a lack of TOT and even if they're made in Russia.
Keep in mind, setting up the necessary facilities to build 100-200 jets in Iran will take alot of time and effort. In the meanwhile the USA, Israel or others might be able to make Russia change its mind somehow. For that reason, I believe that Iran should try to get atleast 25% of the jets into the country as soon as possible.
Afterwards the rest can be built in Iran with TOT. So ideally a deal would go something like this. 60 x SU-27/30/35 variants are sent to Iran as soon as they're ready with technology transfers. Another 60-120 can be built in Iran, perhaps with 20 being built every year. Aside from the SU-27/30/34/35, Iran could also sign a deal for atleast 20-40 SU-57's. Some MIG-35s would also be a good option to compliment Iran's airforce.
Alongside a purchase like that Iran could continue to build its F-5 variant for training and as a light fighter. I'm actually interested to see what Iran is producing in terms of this heavier, delta wing jet. However I'm not going to hold my breath or get my hopes up. Anyways only time will tell.
BUT... Iran's airforce is in danger of becoming quickly obsolete in the near future and I'm not talking about compared to the USA. Even against regional rivals Iran's airforce is barely a threat anymore. Every jet has a life span and many of Iran's fighter jets are near, at the end or even past theirs.
Assuming that Iran does get the opportunity to buy a large number of fighter jets from Russia, we have to take Russia's previous lack of commitment into consideration (S-300). With that in mind I believe that it would be in Iran's best interest to get a significant portions of the jets into Iran's possession as soon as possible, regardless of a lack of TOT and even if they're made in Russia.
Keep in mind, setting up the necessary facilities to build 100-200 jets in Iran will take alot of time and effort. In the meanwhile the USA, Israel or others might be able to make Russia change its mind somehow. For that reason, I believe that Iran should try to get atleast 25% of the jets into the country as soon as possible.
Afterwards the rest can be built in Iran with TOT. So ideally a deal would go something like this. 60 x SU-27/30/35 variants are sent to Iran as soon as they're ready with technology transfers. Another 60-120 can be built in Iran, perhaps with 20 being built every year. Aside from the SU-27/30/34/35, Iran could also sign a deal for atleast 20-40 SU-57's. Some MIG-35s would also be a good option to compliment Iran's airforce.
Alongside a purchase like that Iran could continue to build its F-5 variant for training and as a light fighter. I'm actually interested to see what Iran is producing in terms of this heavier, delta wing jet. However I'm not going to hold my breath or get my hopes up. Anyways only time will tell.
I seem to recall iran trying a somewhat similar route previously back in the [?]1990s,I also recall that it didnt work out very well for rather obvious reasons.....
Irans only REAL options at this point are either full license production of either the su-30 or su-27sm3 or the chinese Shenyang J-16[assuming its available for export that is]
Another option from china would be the latest version of the J-10,tho as a single engine fighter this would be limited to replacing/augmenting the mig29/mirage f1 fleet.
But anything less than FULL COMPLETE LOCAL PRODUCTION in iran is simply an unacceptable risk of ultimately ending up wasting huge amounts of time,money and effort,because sadly BOTH russia and china have shown themselves to be very unreliable in this respect and until they can prove that they are trustworthy partners in this field it would be complete utter folly to agree to anything less than full complete local production of fighter aircraft in iran.