[tanknetter]

"Iran can, at great effort and expense, get a dozen or so F-14s airborne. But once flying, these ancient and jury-rigged aircraft, are more target than threat."

The F-14 is a white elephant, prestige program for the Iranians. The harder they have to work at keeping part of their fleet flying, the more they have to spend.

Especially now that there's a big and growing perception that black-market F-14 parts are going to be increasingly hard to come by.

Making the Iranians p*ss money away is a good thing ;-) If anything, the US should be offically banning the sale of F-14 parts to drive the prices through the ceiling ... then selling the parts to Iran over the black market to help drain the Iranian treasury (which is already being hurt by the fact that Iran imports almost 1/2 of its refined gasoline, and then subsidizes it so heavily that the consumer only pays ~$.40 per gallon).

[sinanju]

That would make for a hilarious twist on the "arms for hostages" deal. Perhaps parts could be surreptitiously traded for information on this and that... Iraqi ops and Hezbollah networks, for instance.