Before Venezuela Incident, U.S.-Made Fighters Faced Off In Middle East

Tensions between the United States and Venezuela have raised the possibility that the U.S. could end up fighting a military armed with American-made F-16 fighter jets. If that does ultimately occur, it wouldn’t mark the first time that U.S.-made fighter jets have faced off against each other, as several past incidents from the Middle East aptly demonstrate.

Two American-made F-16 fighter jets belonging to Venezuela’s air force, officially named the Bolivarian Military Aviation of Venezuela, flew over the Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham on Thursday. Defense Department officials cited by CBS News noted that both the Dunham and the Venezuelan F-16s were within weapons range of each other.

The overflights occurred two days after the U.S. Navy sank a small speedboat allegedly moving drugs from Venezuela in the south Caribbean, killing all 11 crew.

The Trump administration has ordered the deployment of 10 fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II stealth strike fighters to Puerto Rico to support the military buildup in the region. President Trump warned Friday that if Venezuelan fighters overfly U.S. warships again and “put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down.” Trump also clarified that the U.S. isn’t “talking about” regime change against the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro.

While probably unlikely, one cannot completely rule out a scenario in which premier U.S. jets, such as those F-35s, may end up shooting down much older Venezuelan F-16s, which are of the early Block 15 vintage acquired in the early 1980s. Even though Caracas doubtlessly only has a small number of operational F-16s, the fact that it has already scrambled some, in what the Pentagon described as a “show of force,” indicates that clashes are certainly possible.

As past events in the Middle East have demonstrated, U.S.-made fighter jets clashing or facing off against each other is far from unprecedented. On the contrary, it has happened repeatedly.

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and particularly after the infamous seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the lengthy hostage crisis, Iran went from a close U.S. ally to a staunch adversary.

The new Islamic Republic inherited a large arsenal of modern American-made military hardware, including a large air force equipped with F-4 Phantoms, F-5 Tigers, and even fourth-generation F-14A Tomcat fighter jets.

A few months after the revolution, Iran’s new ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, received a request to send F-14s to support Syria, whose Soviet-made, third-generation MiG-21s and MiG-23s were no match for Israel’s new fourth-generation F-15 Eagle fighters in dogfights over Lebanon. Khomeini declined the request, reasoning that Iran couldn’t spare aircraft while it faced a Kurdish revolt. Had the ayatollah acceded, Israel could have found itself facing a Soviet-made air force backed by one of America’s premier fighters—and one armed with the game-changing AIM-54 Phoenix beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile. Israeli F-15s had no comparable missile to the Phoenix at that time.

Of course, that didn’t happen. But clashes between American-made fighter jets did ensue in the region over the following years.

On June 5, 1984, amidst the Iran-Iraq War, Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s intercepted and shot down an Iranian F-4E and damaged a second one that violated Saudi Arabian airspace. The incident quickly led to a brief but intense large-scale aerial standoff, with Iran scrambling additional F-4s backed by F-14s, the only fighters Tehran had to match Riyadh’s Eagles, and Saudi Arabia scrambling F-15s and F-5s.

One retrospective account estimated that both sides had as many as 60 fighters in the air!

The standoff did not escalate. If it had, several fighters, all of them American-made, could’ve been lost on both sides within mere minutes.

Later in the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. military would directly clash with the Iranian military, including in the air, when it deployed the Navy to escort Kuwaiti-flagged tankers in the Persian Gulf. In a notable incident on August 8, 1987, a U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fired medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow missiles at an Iranian F-4 approaching a P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft. While the American Tomcat failed to down the incoming Iranian Phantom, it likely foiled any potentially successful attack on that Orion.

(Just under a year later, the Aegis destroyer USS Vincennes tragically shot down an Iranian civilian airliner on July 3, 1988, killing all aboard. The Vincennes had misidentified the Iran Air Airbus A300 for an attacking Iranian F-14.)

These weren’t the most recent examples of American-made fighters confronting each other over the region.

Decades later, in early 2013, a fifth-generation USAF F-22 Raptor stealth fighter sneaked directly under an Iranian F-4 close, flying close and steady enough to examine its armaments before flying alongside it and signaling it to “go home.” The Iranian Phantom had attempted to intercept a U.S. MQ-1 drone over the Persian Gulf

Much more recently, in May 2025, Turkish F-16s sent warning signals to Israeli jets through their electronic warfare systems while the Israeli fighters, undoubtedly American-made F-35s, F-15s, or F-16s, were carrying out airstrikes over Syria. Both fighters were believed to have been operating inside Syrian airspace at the time.

Following that incident, analysts wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Turkish-Israeli mock dogfights, not unlike the recurring Turkish-Greek ones over the Aegean Sea, occurring over Syria, especially if Israel and Turkey’s opposing policies in that country diverge even further.

With both countries presently operating all-American fighter fleets, including the second and third-largest F-16 fleets, the risk of American-made fighters potentially clashing or colliding—as a Greek F-16 did with a Turkish one in a 2006 Aegean mock dogfight—over Syria cannot be completely ruled out.

While many of the above episodes transpired decades ago, they may still serve as apt precedents if the present tensions in the Caribbean escalate and clashes ensue.