I've been suggesting this for over 10 years, that Iran needs an air force and it can be best built with JF-17.
So we discussed this a million times and the conclusion Iranians always came to was that Pakistan wouldn't sell.
Not only they would have to convince Pakistan and China, they need to convince Russia for the RD-33 engines and Turkey for whatever subsystems they want.
There's no way Iranian state can do diplomacy at this scale.
Last year they were saying that Iran was getting Su-35s and instead they got 2 Yak-130s and nothing more. I see this news as more hot air from Iran. Nothing will happen.