The Toophan forms the backbone of the Iranian Armed Forces' ATGM inventory and is procured in large quantities in a variety of variants.

[5] The Iran–Iraq war lead to Iran having an acute need for anti-tank guided missiles to counter Iraq's massive armored formations, leading Iran to import thousands more TOW missiles, as well as Soviet AT-3 Sagger ATGMs.

Attempts at local production of both systems began in the first half of the war, with the TOW missile being prioritized due to its better performance.

[7][8] The missile was shown on an Iranian TV show on March 21, 1987,[7] and production of what would be named the Toophan 1 began by early 1988.

[13] A number of sources say that the Toophan's quality is inferior to that of original American-made TOW missiles, but is still robustly capable.

[21] The Toophan was later developed into the Sadid-1, an ambitious project to build a competitor to the Israeli Spike-ER fire-and-forget missile for attack helicopters and drones.

Hezbollah received Toophan missiles in the early 2000s and used them against Israeli Merkava tanks and other vehicles during the 2006 Lebanon War.

[citation needed] The missiles have also been provided to the Syrian Army and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Syria.

In addition, Toophan missiles have been captured by groups fighting the Syrian government, including ISIS[29] and al-Nusra.

Toophan missiles, launchers, control units, and crates are essentially interchangeable with their American counterparts and are regularly mixed together.

[31] Internally, Toophan missiles have different screw placement[39] and cylindrical launch motor nozzles.