They also had Chieftain Tanks, helicopter gun ships, had advanced US warships on order etc...
Also IMHO during the Iran / Iraq war the Iranian Air Force seemed quite adept in using what they had despite the lack of support from the U.S.
As I understand things the Air Force was realitivley western in certain respects, and as others have mentioned some of the key staff were apparently jailed after the revolution and subsequently released to fight in the Iran / Iraq war.
Like many other dictatorships the pre Revolution Iranian airforce tended to be drawn from the ranks of the upper/upper middle class that were the most fervent Shah supporters. Since pretty much all of the airforce pilots were considered politically reliable by the Shah's government the Mullah's government considered them effectively enemies of the state. So at the time of the Iraqi attack more or less the entire Iranian airforce was grounded with pretty much all of the pilots in prison and or being tortured. A handful had fled abroad or were executed by the revolutionaries but most were still alive at the start of the war. That allowed the Mullah's to relatively rapidly get at least some of their new airforce back in the fight.
If the Mullahs had say executed most of the pilots instead of just imprisoning them it would have been a hell of a lot harder to get the airforce into the fight. Iran would be left with a huge number of modern or semi modern aircraft but little ability to actually use them.