Next to Israel, Iran was the largest overseas operator of the Phantom. A total of 32 F-4Ds, 177 F-4Es, and 16 RF-4Es (plus 8 F-4Es borrowed from the USA and subsequently returned) were supplied to Iran before the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic fundamentalist regime resulted in a cutoff of further arms supplies.

Air power did not play a dominant role in the Iran-Iraq war, because both sides were unable to use their air forces very effectively. At first, IRIAF Phantoms took part in deep penetration raids against targets in and around Baghdad and supported ground operations at the front. Fighter-vs-fighter combat was rather rare throughout the entire course of the Iran-Iraq war. During the first phase of the war, Iranian aircraft had the fuel and the endurance to win most of these aerial encounters, either by killing with their first shot of an AIM-9 or else by forcing Iraqi fighters to withdraw. However, at this stage in the war the infrared homing missiles used by the fighters of both sides were generally ineffective in anything other than tail-chase firings at medium to high altitudes. In addition, most of the time, the APQ-120 radar of the Iranian F-4E Phantoms was inoperable because of the lack of spare parts caused by the arms embargo, which meant that the Sparrow missile could not be fired.

The Iranians found it extremely difficult to keep their Phantom fleet operational all throughout the Iran-Iraq war. The Phantom is a very complex, maintenance-intensive aircraft, requiring 135 man-hours of maintenance in the shop for each hour in the air. The lack of spare parts caused by the arms embargo plus the general lack of adequate numbers of trained maintenance personnel made things even worse. A defecting Iranian colonel claimed that Iran's F-4 force was down to only 20 flyable aircraft by the end of 1986, with no RF-4Es still being operational.

Iran was only able to keep its F-4s flying by scrounging spare parts and replacements from whatever source it could. Israel secretly delivered Phantom spare parts to Iran, presumably thinking that by doing this it would help to keep Iraq occupied. There were reports that Israel supplied critical spare parts for the Phantom's APQ-120 radar, which made it possible to fire the Sparrow semiactive radar-homing missile. In addition, Iran was able to purchase some arms supplies by buying them on the world market, either legally or illegally. In August 31, 1984, an Iranian F-4 pilot defected with his aircraft to Saudi Arabia, and upon investigation his aircraft was found to have components that came from Israel and several NATO countries.

Although Phantom availability remained quite low all throughout the remainder of the Iran-Iraq war, as late as January of 1988, the IRIAF was still able to mount rocket attacks during the tanker war in the Gulf.

When the war ended in 1988, the IRIAF probably had only a dozen or less Phantoms that were still in good enough condition to fly. Estimates of the number of Phantoms that are currently operational with the IRIAF vary widely. Somewhere between 70 and 75 Phantoms are believed to be currently flying in Iran. Surprisingly, a few F-4Ds actually remain in service, but most of the IRIAF Phantoms are the F-4E version, plus a small-number of RF-4Es. IRIAF Phantoms have been subject to local upgrades--the APQ-120 radar of the F-4E and the APQ-109 radar of the F-4D have been significantly improved in range in both the tracking and search modes, and the IRIAF F-4E now even has a limited look-down, shoot-down capability. Most of the IRIAF Phantoms are now operated in an air-to-ground role or maritime strike capacity.

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