Certainly, but what could justify a policy that turned Ukraine into a place where only some parts of the country don’t hate Russia? At the end of the day Russia has paid a ridiculous price to keep Ukraine out of Nato, which was probably never more than a fantasy to begin with and could have been waylaid by far easier means.

Question though is how much of that Mirage fleet is even serviceable today? And would PAF not have been better off investing in the more capable J-10? At the end of the day, its assembling the JF-17 locally from Chinese kits with some local input in airframe and other assembly to pick up over time. They could have done the same for the J-10 and a 100+ J-10 fleet would have surely been a much better force.

Are you familiar with the old sayings money doesn’t grow on trees and a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush?

100 “not a pound for air to ground” J-10 would pay for 140 multirole JF-17. Going for J-10s would force PAF to keep those vastly less capable Mirages in service for ground attack. Not to mention there was no spare J-10 production in the 2000s so they’d have to wait even longer. Finally China was willing to cut Pakistan in on a piece of the action if they find export customers. What is so hard to understand?

You’d think it would include enhancements found on the crashed sample in Abbottabad.

Regarding the configuration, any guesses to why Northrop didn’t use the cranked kite wing they favored for the X-47B as well as their NGB proposal?

Given the fact that Russia only went into Syria when Iran convinced it to, not buying Russian would be a shocking turn. The political ties currently are stronger than with any other large power. Russia also was key in helping Iran through the nuclear deal mess.

Also, in a recent interview the Iranian Minister of Defense Hossein Dedghan mentioned they were very interested in the Su-30 and are in the process of working out a deal. Not sure how that works with the whole nuclear deal, but maybe they will work over the next few years at setting up an assembly line (or realistically, local kit assembly) in Iran with deliveries starting in 2020.

He also mentioned in the same interview Iran has no plans to acquire the J-10.

I doubt China will sell any advanced combat aircraft to Iran. They have no incentive to take sides in this Shiite/Sunni war and they already have too many business interests tied up with the Gulf Arabs. But they’ll be happy to let Iranians in the store to have a look around. Maybe they’ll buy something else, an inoffensive AWACS for example. Besides it helps to remind the Saudis not to take China for granted.

Russia is the natural partner for Iran since they share mutual enemies and Russia is not dependent on Saudi oil like China is.

Why would WS-13 enter full production when there are no airplanes in production that will use that engine? Unless ones assumes China is going to start building FC-1s for itself, as J-31 is no where near its production and the PAF is content with RD-93s

You’re assuming there are only two applications for WS-13. It’s probable there’s at least another project, possibly unmanned that this engine is slotted for. It’s also good to have an alternative to a Russian engine for many customers.

Assuming Russo-Iranian relations continue to bloom for the next ten years, and the T-50 project prove successful, a deal is highly likely. But before that happens I would expect a lot of Flanker and Fulcrum sales. Russia may see this as a great opportunity to make Iran buy some MiG-35s, perhaps a big fat production license as pre-condition for other stuff Iran will want, like Su-35 and S-400.