Consider that the US is top military technology these days and Iran is maybe 1970’s era at best, and USSR 1970’s at that. It’s not so much Iran is a paper tiger as it’s a tiny house kitten and the US is an actual tiger. The US military outclasses Iran’s military. Mistakes and errors could happen resulting in a lose of US hardware or personnel, but absent that it’s not much of a contest.
Is the primary purpose of Iranian ground forces to protect the country form outsiders? I would think a significant reason to maintain their military is to go after internal dissidents.
In the last fifty years, Israel has fought Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Those aren’t exactly formidable opponents.
Yes, but $4 billion is $4 billion. Its not a whole lot of money as far as militaries go.
From what I can tell, yes. I posted a link upthread that showed the majority of Iran’s military budget goes to internal security, with another 1/4 going to ‘social security’ which I guess is benefits for soldiers and the dead.. The actual military is only 13% of their military budget.
The Vietnamese were not exactly formidable opponents either. IIRC every time the US squared off in a set-piece battle the US made short work of them.
But the Vietnamese won.
Did you choose to not actually read anything that I wrote? Because that’s an incredibly ignorant statement to make. If I decide to take 1/6th of your disposable income, surely, you’d be fine with that, right? I mean what’s a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars. It’s not a whole lot of money as far as buying luxury goods goes, right?
People are perfectly capable of reading what you write and not being persuaded by it. $4 billion is still $4 billion. And Israel gained air supremacy over a nation a thousand miles away in a few days while Iraq and Iran fought to a stalemate for 8 years, and Russia hasn’t been able to gain air supremacy over Ukraine in 3 years despite Russia’s military budget arguably being $350 billion in PPP.
Iranians are mostly Persian, and some Turkish. Only like 1% Arab.
True but in 10 years that is $40 billion. It adds up. Israel probably still has 30 year-old F-15 fighter jets (which are still remarkably capable).
As long as they keep collecting stuff over the years it can add up to a lot. They are not replacing equipment (mostly). They just keep adding to it.
ETA: Also, Israel really needs quality over quantity. Quantity often is the winning strategy but Israel simply does not have the numbers to pull that off compared to those around them. So, they buy a comparatively few of the best weapons systems they can and then train the people who use them to be the absolute best they can be.
You keep mentioning PPP without apparently understanding what it means. That meaningless to you $4 billion is worth a whole hell of a lot more than $4 billion in your imaginary Russian $350 billion budget. Because that $350 billion is a number that attempts to normalize what Russia would be paying if it had to pay personnel, maintenance, etc., etc. in Western wages. While that $4 billion that the US is giving Israel every year is pure procurement. And again, is 1/6th of its entire budget, and is spent buying top of the line US technology that it didn’t have to pay the development cost of.
They had the support of China and the Soviet Union. China even provided considerable personnel.
I think you are conflating the Korean War with Vietnam.
China got way into it in Korea.
The Soviets provided material and some few advisors to Vietnam. I do not think there were Soviet or Chinese troops fighting in Vietnam though (not in big numbers at least).
Yeah, I think this is a major factor. Also the fact that Israel seems to prioritize its air force as part of its military (I would assume, since air strikes and air supremacy seem integral to Israel’s military strategy).
They’re a fairly small country, but apparently they have about 300 combat jets. Mostly a mix of F-15, F-16 and F-35.
By comparison, most nations in western Europe like the UK, France, Germany, etc have closer to ~200 combat jets. So Israel has an air force larger and more advanced than virtually every nation on earth except the US.
Russia has a lot of jets, but their quality is much lower than western jets.
I’m going to tread into a political minefield here, but the stereotype about Jews being smart doesn’t exist for nothing. And many of the people who emigrated to Israel were highly educated in their original homelands. Combining that, with the fact that a Westernized democracy is likely to let the cream rise to the top, and you have a more meritocratic and innovative military. It’s not just the question of “Why is Israel’s military good with limited budget” but rather, “Why is Israel’s (everything else) also better with low budget?” Israel excels in solar power, desalination, higher education, medicine, lasers, engineering, space, other fields of tech, various other innovations that their surrounding Arab neighbors don’t.
China provided much support to the North Vietnamese. They provided training and equipment but also a lot of non-combat personnel.
1.) Iran is not Arab. Arabs compromise a couple of percent of the population at most. To the extent the military culture argument may be loosely applicable, it is not an identical situation. Iran’s version of kleptocracy is rather more institution-based than so many Arab countries in the region, because it is an explicit theocracy. Supreme Leader Khameni himself does not appear to be living high on the hog. During the Iran-Iraq War the deleterious issues with the Iranian military were often more ideology-based, like reliance on things like élan over military professionalism. The regime trusts ideological institutions like the Revolutionary Guard over the professional regular military and budgets and resource allocation can reflect that.
2.) This is not the issue. The issue is modern equipment is vastly superior to outdated equipment. The Iranian air forced is substantially comprised of Western-built aircraft, mostly American. Still. Ancient F-4s, F-5s and a handful of barely operable F-14s and maybe a few captured-from-Iraq French Mirage F1s still outnumber the small number of Russian Mig-29s (old Mig-29s), Su-24s and a few Chinese Mig-21 knock-offs. They are woefully, woefully outmatched by modern combat aircraft that can knock them out of the sky before they can ever close to their engagement range. It’s much the same problem Ukraine has had until F-16s started arriving - modern Russian aircraft are far superior to Ukraine’s older Soviet versions.
Iran has been seeking to upgrade their inventory with Russian aircraft in recent years. But since it is very expensive, it isn’t a budget priority (because military ideology and pragmatism - missiles are so much cheaper) and since Iran is poor, they are arriving in trickles or not at all. A number of reported deals in the 2000s seem to have not happened.
3.) Iran is not rich. I have noticed that there is tendency to think of them as a wealthy petro-state because oil is their main source of export income and their reserves are large. But sanctions have bit - they export far, far less now than they did in 2017. Meanwhile they have a population of over 90 million.
From a Western military pov they always have been. Their muscle is significant only in a purely regional sense and is mainly leveraged via a lot of light infantry support (Revolutionary Guards) for neighboring regimes like Syria and Iraq. The Guard units really are better at infantry combat than the chaotic messes the Syrians and Iraqis could field, so they were more effective fighting Sunni Islamic insurgents than the woeful armies/militias those countries could throw into the fight. Like I said above their competency deficits are of a different type relative to their Arab neighbors.
They are strategically placed to be disruptive in the Gulf and they had invested heavily in missile launchers to make themselves a long-range threat in that context to help cover things like the deficiencies in their air force. Against the weak militaries partially surrounding them they were no one to mess with. They could project influence through proxies and by exporting guard units to stiffen shit armies as above. But a dangerous colossus they never were. Russia even sans nuclear weapons is far, far more threatening and Russia really was a paper tiger. Iran was just a big(ger) fish in a small pond and still tiny compared to Israel’s subjective blue whale.
Thank you. I was becoming quite irritated.
I socialize with my wife’s friends and family, and I get to hear, on a regular basis, how the Persians talk about their Arab neighbors (in a geopolitical sense). You need to understand the absolutely fierce separation they feel between the cultures, and the shockingly negative opinion Iranians hold for Arab countries. If you heard a white person saying these things, you wouldn’t hesitate to call them racist.
Also, regarding the military budget and internal suppression — on a day-to-day basis, the Revolutionary Guard, the “official” military, is not used for that purpose. They may be deployed for riot control during large-scale protests, but that’s not typically. Instead, there is an effectively separate wing of internal enforcement called the Basij (بسيج , which literally means “to be mobilized”). They’re halfway between a paramilitary police force and an irregular militia. They’re the ones who patrol the country, looking for dissent. If an informer rats somebody out, it’s the Basij who respond.
They are technically part of the larger Revolutionary Guard Corps, but operationally they’re distinct and separate. For example, while the Revolutionary Guard proper is kitted out with uniforms and marked vehicles and such, the Basij tend to operate in civilian garb, buzzing around on consumer-grade motorbikes, so as to blend in with the population. (The organization is called the Basij; a single member of it is called a basiji.)
They are also regarded by people as less professional, more thuggish, than the military proper. They tend to be loose cannons, angry or disaffected young men who are recruited young and handed authority to monitor internal security, especially “morals policing.” These are the guys who will roll up on a woman and physically attack her if they think her hijab is improperly worn. Or if someone reports the illicit satellite dish on your roof which you use to catch Western broadcasting, it’s the Basij who will kick down your door.
The important thing about this is that the Basij don’t get substantial internal funding. They’re largely an informal Thug Patrol, poorly trained and poorly equipped. To whatever extent military spending may consider the needs of suppressing internal dissent, the men on the ground don’t get very much. The actual Iranian military budget is completely opaque, so the figures we have range from educated estimates to total guesswork, but it simply doesn’t cost that much to recruit a bunch of testosterone-poisoned lunkheads, give every other guy a dirtbike, and turn them loose on the streets. It’s more reasonable to think a lot of that money goes to surveillance operations, or disappears into the black hole of corruption, as has been discussed above.
According to reports, Israel has just bombed Basij headquarters.
I never said Iran was Arab.
The Question was : How is Israel’s military so competent with such a low budget".
And my answer was good. They have won many wars, almost exclusively against Arab Armies. All true.
And don’t insult me with your condescension !
I am well aware of the difference between Persians an Arabs.
Whether this war is won or lost has yet to be decided.
Hearing Iranians, the idea that Iran might collapse into chaos like Iraq, Syria, or Lybia did is deeply insulting to them, and if you tell them that’s what you think might happen if the Ayatollah is taken out, they’ll push back by explaining all the differences between those countries and Iran. In ways that, yes, can come across as racist.