defense

Is the Iranian Army a Strong Army? What are the capabilities of the Iranian Army?

The number of armed people Iran possesses is not limited to the number of armed soldiers in its own country, both as a military power in the Middle East and because of its links with Shiite and other religious groups close to it in Iraq and Syria, in addition to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, which it controls in the Middle East.

The outbreak of a direct military confrontation between Iran and Israel has led to a renewed focus on the Iranian Armed Forces. On 1 April 2024, Israel attacked a building in Iran's diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, killing seven senior Iranian commanders and military personnel.

Iran vowed to retaliate for the attack on its diplomatic compound. Nearly two weeks later, on Saturday, Iran launched a massive airstrike, involving hundreds of drones and missiles, against Israel and targets inside Israel and the territories it controls.

Why is the Iranian military important now?

Israeli officials have declared that they would respond to any Iranian attack with a counter-attack, which could lead to further Iranian retaliation and possibly escalate into a wider regional war. While Washington has made it clear that this has nothing to do with the attack on Damascus, there is also the possibility that these mutual retaliatory confrontations could drag the United States into a major regional conflict.

Analysts say that Iran's enemies, especially the United States and Israel, have avoided direct military attacks on Iran for decades because they do not want to get involved in Tehran's complex military power. Instead, Israel and Iran have engaged in a long shadow war through air, sea, land and cyber attacks. Israel has covertly targeted Iranian military and nuclear facilities, killing key Iranian commanders and scientists.

"There is a reason why Iran has not been hit," said Afshon Ostovar, associate professor of national security affairs at the University of Michigan's Naval Postgraduate School and an expert on the Iranian military. "Iran's enemies are not afraid of Iran. They have realised that any war against Iran is a very serious war." He underlined that the issue is progressing step by step towards war.

How does Iran use other military groups?

So far, Iran has not played a direct role in the Gaza conflict, which began six months ago. However, it supports groups attacking Israel, US interests and merchant ships using the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. These groups, which have been formed over decades with Iranian support, describe themselves as the "Axis of Resistance" against Israel and US influence in the Middle East. This axis includes the Palestinian group Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and the Houthi movement in Yemen, as well as various armed groups in Iraq and Syria. One of these groups, Lebanese Hezbollah, was founded in 1982 by the Revolutionary Guards to fight the Israeli forces that invaded Lebanon that year. This heavily armed group, which is also an influential political player, is widely recognised as more powerful than the Lebanese state.

What kind of military threat does Iran pose?

According to an annual assessment conducted last year by the International Institute, Iran's armed forces are among the largest in the Middle East, with at least 580,000 regular personnel and about 200,000 trained reservists, divided between the conventional army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Army and the Guards each have separate and active land, air and naval forces, with the Guards responsible for Iran's border security. The General Staff of the Armed Forces coordinates the branches and sets the overall strategy.

The Guards also command the Quds Force, an elite unit responsible for arming, training and supporting the network of proxy militias known as the "axis of resistance" across the Middle East. Qassem Soleimani, killed on 3 January 2020, was the commander of this force. These proxy militias include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militia groups in Syria and Iraq, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Although proxy militias are not considered part of Iran's armed forces, military analysts say that they can be considered a regional allied force that is combat-ready, heavily armed and ideologically loyal to the Iranian state, and could come to Iran's aid if attacked.

The commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces is the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all major decisions.

"The level of Iranian support to non-state actors and the types of systems, drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, are truly unprecedented," said Fabian Hinz, an expert on the Iranian military from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Berlin. "These can be seen as part of Iran's military capacity, particularly that of Hezbollah, which has the closest strategic relationship with Iran."

Drone models at the Iranian defence industry exhibition in Tehran last year.

What kind of weapons does Iran have?

For decades, Iran's military strategy has been based on deterrence, with an emphasis on the development of precision and long-range missiles, drones and air defence systems. To this end, Iran has built a large fleet of speedboats and some small submarines capable of disrupting shipping traffic and global energy supplies passing through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Afshon Ostovar of the Naval Postgraduate School states that Iran has one of the largest arsenals of ballistic missiles and drones in the Middle East. This includes cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, as well as ballistic missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometres, or more than 1,200 miles. These missiles have the capacity and range to hit any target in the Middle East, including Israel. With this statement, he emphasises that Iran's military power should not be underestimated.

According to experts and Iranian commanders who have given public interviews to state news media, in recent years Tehran has built up a large inventory of drones with a range of about 1,200 to 1,550 miles and the capacity to fly low to evade radar. Iran has not concealed this accumulation by displaying its treasure trove of drones and missiles at military parades. It also aims to establish a large export business in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles. Iranian drones have been used by Russia in Ukraine and have been used in the conflict in Sudan.

Experts say that Iran's bases and storage facilities are widely dispersed throughout Iran and even buried deep in the ground, as well as being fortified with air defence systems, making them very difficult to destroy by air strikes.

Where does Iran get its weapons?

Decades of international sanctions have deprived Iran of high-tech weapons and military equipment such as tanks and fighter jets produced abroad. During Iran's eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, few countries were willing to sell arms to Iran. When Ayatollah Khamenei became Iran's supreme leader in 1989, a year after the end of the war, he tasked the Guards to develop a domestic arms industry. The state funded and supported this endeavour, which was widely reported in the Iranian news media. He attached great importance to this development effort and support for Iran's own defence needs and because he wanted to ensure that Iran would never again have to rely on foreign powers.

Experts say that Iran today produces large quantities of missiles and drones domestically and has prioritised the production of defence systems. Attempts to build armoured vehicles and large naval vessels have also met with mixed results. While expanding and modernising its domestically produced fleet, it is also importing small submarines from North Korea.

Some of the combat aircraft in Iran's arsenal include American-made F4 Phantoms, decades-old aircraft sold to Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

How do other countries view the Iranian army and what are its weaknesses?

Experts make it clear that the Iranian army is considered one of the strongest in the region in terms of equipment, cohesion, experience and quality of personnel, but it lags far behind the strength and sophistication of the armed forces of the United States, Israel and some European countries.

Iran's greatest weakness is its air power. Most of the country's aircraft date from the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled Iran from 1941 to 1979, and many aircraft have been decommissioned due to lack of spare parts. Experts have also said that Iran purchased a small fleet from Russia in the 1990s.

Military experts say that Iran's tanks and armoured vehicles are obsolete and that the country has only a few large naval vessels. American officials say that two intelligence-gathering ships, the Saviz and Behshad, deployed in the Red Sea, have helped the Houthis identify Israeli ships for attacks.

Will the Israeli attack disrupt the Iranian military?

The assassinations of senior military officials, such as Qassem Soleimani, and the elimination of commanders with many years of experience and ties to the leaders of allied militias, are expected to have a short-term negative impact on Iran's regional operations. Nevertheless, experts say that the chain of command of Iran's armed forces remains intact.

Iran's nuclear weapons capability

In addition to the uranium enrichment activities that Iran is considered to be continuing, an important question today is how long it will take Iran to produce the rest of a nuclear weapon and how long it will take to make it small enough to be deployed in a delivery system such as a ballistic missile if it so chooses. It is very difficult to estimate the answer to this question today, as there is not much documentation and information on how much Iran knows about how to build a nuclear weapon.

US intelligence agencies and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) believe that Iran has a coordinated nuclear weapons programme, which it halted in 2003. A 2015 IAEA report found that Iran was working on nuclear proliferation issues, with some work continuing as far back as 2009.

Iran denies having a nuclear weapons programme, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said that world leaders "cannot stop Iran" even if they wanted to. Estimates of how long Iran would need to produce nuclear weapons generally range from months to a year.

Missiles in Iran's possession

In March 2023, the then top US military official, General Mark Milley, told Congress that it would take Iran several months to achieve nuclear weapons, but he did not explain what this assessment was based on.

In a quarterly report published in February this year, the IAEA stated: "Public statements by Iranian officials regarding Iran's technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons only add to the Director-General's concerns about the accuracy and completeness of Iran's safeguards declarations."

Diplomats have said that these statements include a television interview in which Iran's former nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, likened building nuclear weapons to building cars, and that Iran knows exactly how to make the parts needed for a nuclear weapon.

The JCPOA (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and its implementation, Nuclear Agreement with Iran) was signed in 2015 by the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Germany. This nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew in 2018, imposed strict limits on Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran. With this agreement, Iran had significantly reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium, leaving only a small amount of uranium enriched to a purity of up to 3.67%. This was far from the roughly 90 per cent purity required to make nuclear weapons. The US said at the time that the main objective was to increase the time Iran would need to produce enough fissile nuclear material for a nuclear bomb (the biggest obstacle in its weapons programme) to at least one year.

Iranian drone production

A satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies on 8 January 2020 shows a general view of Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, northeast of the city of Qom. (Satellite image/Maxar Technologies/AFP)

Iran's nuclear internal bunker

One of the fundamental changes envisaged by the architects of the JCPOA was the conversion of an underground facility, officially known as the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, into an isotope production centre for medical applications and civilian research. Conceived by Iran as a secret facility for making enriched uranium, it was built in 300 metres of cut tunnels in a steep mountainside just northeast of Qom, an arid ancient city and HAC site in northern Iran. Western intelligence agencies identified the facility while it was still under construction and Obama announced its existence to the world in 2009.

Fordow now symbolises the collapse of the nuclear deal.

Under the agreement, most of Fordow's centrifuges were shelved and the remaining ones were only allowed to produce isotopes for medical applications and civilian research. All fissile uranium was removed from the facilities. The facility was then gradually revived by Iran following Trump's decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal in 2018. According to the latest IAEA report released to member states last month (March 2024), since 2018 IAEA inspectors have watched enriched uranium production at Fordow rise from zero to more than 700 pounds last February.

The Iranian Air Force, which has not been able to purchase fighter jets for a long time due to embargoes, has old US-made F-4, F-5 and F-14 and Russian Mig-29 and Su-24 fighter jets in its inventory.

Iranian Deputy Defence Minister Mehdi Farahi said that his country has completed the necessary arrangements for the delivery of Russian-made Su-35 fighter jets and helicopters. In an interview with Tasnim News Agency, Farahi said, "Plans (procedures) have been finalised for Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 HAVOC attack helicopters and Yak-130 jet combat training aircraft to join the combat units of the Iranian army." stated the statement. The single-seat, twin-engined Su-35, designed by the Russian Sukhoi company, is used as a multi-purpose fourth-generation fighter. However, the news report did not include any confirmation of the agreement and the finalisation of the sale by Russia.

In addition to Russian jets, the Iranian Air Force has only a few dozen attack aircraft, including older American models purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force has 37,000 personnel.

The Iranian Air Force, which has been unable to purchase fighter jets for a long time due to embargoes, has old US-made F-4, F-5 and F-14, as well as Russian Mig-29 and Su-24 fighter jets.

In 2018, Iran announced that it started mass production of the Kevser fighter jet, which was indigenously and indigenously designed by Iranian engineers for use in the air force. Iran claims that it produced the Kevser fighter jet itself. Military experts, on the other hand, believe that the Kevser is an exact copy of the F-5, which was produced in the US in the 1960s.

It has not been disclosed to the media how many fighter jets and helicopters Iran will receive under the agreement between Moscow and Tehran. The two countries, which act together on regional issues, have also increased their military relations, especially after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

How are the Sukhoi-24 fighter jets in Iran's possession?

According to the IISS, Tehran has a fleet of nine F-4 and F-5 fighter jets, another fleet of Russian-made Sukhoi-24 jets and some MiG-29, F7 and F14 aircraft. Iran relies heavily on Russian and domestically produced surface-to-air missiles and air defence systems for its air defence.

Iran also possesses targeted kamikaze drones. According to analysts, the number of these drones could be in the thousands. It is also estimated that Iran possesses around 3,500 surface-to-surface missiles, some of which carry half-tonne warheads. However, it is estimated that the number of these missiles that can reach Israel is very limited.

The commander of the Iranian Air Force, Amir Vahidi, said on Wednesday that the Sukhoi-24 fighter jets purchased from Russia were "in a state of high readiness" against a possible Israeli attack. Iran's dependence on Sukhoi-24 fighter jets developed in the 1960s highlights the relative weakness of its air power against Israel.

In 2016, Tehran purchased from Russia the S-300 anti-aircraft defence system, a long-range surface-to-air missile system capable of hitting multiple targets simultaneously, including aircraft and ballistic missiles. In a retaliatory Israeli airstrike on Iran, it was revealed that an important part of this Russian S-300 air defence system had been damaged. Iranian media had previously reported that on the morning of 19 April, explosions were heard in the northeast of Isfahan province, home to the Iranian Air Force Base.

Iran also has the indigenously produced "Bavar-373" surface-to-air missile system, as well as the "Sayyad" and "Raad" defence systems. The 'Bavar-373' Air Defence System and its related systems, developed by Iran on the basis of the Russian S-300 air defence system, are being updated to be used against ballistic missiles, and efforts are underway to increase the technical and physical capacities and range of these missiles.

Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at IISS, told Reuters: "In the event of a major conflict between the two countries, Iran would probably focus on occasional successes. They do not have the comprehensive air defences that Israel has."

CONCLUSION:

It would be very erroneous to think of Iran's armed strength in terms of the number of troops in the country. The number of armed people Iran possesses is not limited to the number of armed soldiers in its own country, both as a military power in the Middle East and because of its links with Shiite and other religious groups close to it in Iraq and Syria, in addition to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, which it controls in the Middle East.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards continue to actively use the Quds Force, which is responsible for arming, training and supporting resistance organisations elsewhere in the Middle East. This has attracted the attention of Israel and other US, UK and EU countries, including Saudi Arabia, and they are trying to stop or slow down Iran by killing these senior military officials. For this purpose, they have started a manhunt at all levels. In the face of these events, the Iranian state has also taken retaliatory actions. The incidents continue to escalate in the form of mutual revenge.

Due to the embargoes imposed on Iran, instead of strengthening its air force, Iran has focused on missile and UAV or drone technologies and continued its development in this direction. With these technologies, it also provided drone assistance for the benefit of Russia in the Ukraine-Russia war. Iran has developed its air defence system based on the S-300 air defence system it received from Russia, and is updating its air defence system day by day with more precise, longer range, and with techniques and engineering to intercept ballistic missiles.

Due to the embargoes imposed on the country, Iran is unable to transfer sufficient monetary resources to extract the mineral resources in its country and present them to the world markets and cannot fully ensure its economic development. It literally suffers from poverty in existence.

Following the 2015 nuclear deal between the US, China, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, the United States, China, Russia, the UK, France and Germany, from which the US withdrew in 2018, Iran has continued to produce enriched uranium. According to the March 2024 IAEA report, IAEA inspectors observed that since 2018, enriched uranium production at Fordow has increased from zero to over 700 pounds last February.

In response to Iran's aspirations to become a nuclear power, the state of Israel is doing its best to limit Iran's capabilities in this regard. However, the fact that the Iranian state has built some of these facilities underground and distributed them in different parts of the country has made it impossible to strike and destroy them all at the same time. The recent shooting down of the S300 system, which is thought to have been deployed for air defence purposes in the areas where the nuclear production facilities and missile bases are located, should be considered in this context.

Iran is trying to expand its front and force its adversaries to fight in a larger area by taking the increasing events in the Middle East beyond the borders of the country. For this purpose, Russia also wants to strengthen its hand by transferring the difficulties it faces in Ukraine to the Middle East. Recently, the arms and material support provided to Ukraine by Western countries has also decreased and Ukraine has been left in the middle, so to speak, in this war. Thus, Iran is trying to prevent further damage to its economy by western countries and Israel due to embargoes. At the same time, it aims to somehow prevent the growing popular movements of the opposition groups within Iran against the Mullah regime.

The current events bring polarisation in the world and especially in the Middle East. Thus, Russia, China and Iran have gathered under the name of the Shanghai Five organisation. Opposing the Shanghai Five is the economic partnership of the USA, Israel, the UK and India and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) project that has developed in connection with this partnership. The Middle East, the Gaza region and the Suez Canal have turned into an arena where the economic, oil, trade, military and nuclear powers of these groups face each other. Gaza is in some way the site of this bloody slaughter.

The Iranian state wants to sell its main natural resources, oil and natural gas, to the EU countries by opening the Mediterranean Sea and thus aims to improve its economy and increase its welfare level. For these reasons, it is trying to organise the forces loyal to it in the region and even Kurdish elements in this direction.

Other Islamic countries in the region watch the events in silence and wait for the time when it will be their turn. In response to the developing events, these Islamic countries are silently watching the developments in the understanding of 3 monkeys, either because of sectarian differences or economic interests or because they do not want any harm to their kingdoms. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Iraq and Syria are the states where this division and separation are intensely experienced.

In addition, the fire created by the ongoing Ukrainian war at the bottom of Europe has the potential to spread and expand at any moment between Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the USA. Iran-Armenia relations should be questioned in this context.

In addition to the incidents in Israel and Gaza, it is only a matter of time before this fire in the Middle East spreads to the Aegean and the Mediterranean due to the increasing 12-mile rhetoric of Greece and Greek Cypriot Southern Cyprus, which provide most of their economy through oil tankers and shipping.

It is obvious that the events in the region will increase and expand the military and strategic cooperation between Iran, China and Russia. The countries of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are at the centre of the events that are developing due to these wars of trade and influence.

Western powers, who do not want to confront Iran, will want to confront Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other potential countries with Iran for this purpose, and thus they will try to weaken, neutralise or minimise the Iranian state and its military power in some way without harming themselves.

As Turkey, it is another fact that there are many lessons to be learnt from these events in the Middle East. This issue is not an issue to be passed over with 1-2 sentences, but should be thoroughly examined by many experts and strategists, and Turkey's national interests should be protected by conducting very comprehensive research and evaluations.

Detailed analyses and analyses of the terrorist organisation-induced incidents in our country in the last 30 years should be carried out in a healthy way for these purposes. In order to prevent the same events in the future, the measures that should be taken now and at what level should be analysed in detail.

Since these issues require a great deal of strategy, analysis and knowledge, they should not be dealt with in a simplistic manner and should not be discussed haphazardly on TV. Debates in which everyone has an opinion in every way are far from telling the public the truth.

National security experts who appear on TV should be educated and have international academic careers. It is a great comedy that people who have never conducted any studies on Iran find Iran's armed forces weak and ineffective and share them in various environments... Moreover, most experts do not even know that we, as Turkey, can see even the air movements in the region in a limited way.

STRASAM and similar strategic thinking groups should be the central point of these researches by conducting more organised and more scientific studies and collaborations for this purpose, and should even join forces with universities, academics and international experts in their fields. The state should use the contributions and support it provides to other groups and associations for this purpose and carry out studies on this subject together with experts.