This is a factor, but I get the impression that western equipment is superior to Russian equipment even when accounting for age. The Javelins and Bradleys that have been used to destroy Russian tanks were created 30-40 years ago.
Yeah, looking into it Iran has a GDP of 644billion in 2012. Their GDP now is only about 400 billion.
Even the tanks created 30-40 months ago aren’t significantly improved over their immediate 40-year-old ancestors, and the technological advances they incorporate are reported in Ukraine to not work or not matter (looking at you, T-14 Armata).
The statistical standard Russian Main Battle Tank is a slighly modernized T-72.
About 15-20 years ago, I was at a lecture by historian Bernard Lewis. One thing he said that stuck with me is that there were only three actual nation-states in the Middle East, those being Israel, Egypt and Iran, and that the remaining countries were essentially city-states and tribal fiefdoms. I remembered that in 2011, when the Arab Spring led to chaos throughout the Arab world, except for Egypt, where the revolution came and went relatively peacefully. I think that if Iran goes through political changes as a result of current events, they’ll be less like Syria and more like what happened in Egypt.
Perhaps.
The folks who make up the Basij nationwide will certainly be in a physical and mental place to quickly morph into local groups led by local warlords. Much as what happened in Iraq during their US-triggered ungoverned chaos.
Local warlords need troops, and it’s much easier to recruit those when you’re a tribal leader and your people are more loyal to you than to the idea of the nation-state.
Agreed. But at the same time folks that have been used to being sorta-paid lawless thugs under the old regime will probably desire to be paid lawless thugs under the new regime too. Those are the troops a local warlord (AKA former Basij local commander) would need.
I agree it’s a harder sell to a populace who’s more “civilized” for lack of a better term. I utterly lack the local cultural knowledge to handicap this race though.
One of my fears is the US authoritarians (probably the leader after trump) creating a Basij-like unofficial bully force in the US. Dedicated to harrassing and/or killing anyone who’s not white cishet conservative and dares stick out. And “criminals”. Duterte-style death squads would be hugely popular with the MAGA set. With them both as cheerleaders and as participants.
Once they’d become well-established then, given our highly tribal and violent society, they would be very hard to stamp out once popular patience with authoritarianism eventually wanes. Which it will, but only after decades of enduring misery and violence.
Which is sort of where Iran is politically today, setting aside the current war. Many Iranians are quite tired of the regime, but aren’t ready to launch a revolt over it. Again ignoring the current war, give it another 20 years and it’s a good bet the majority of Iranians won’t be putting up with the Islamic Republic and all it’s corrupt authoritarianism. But until that sainted day, the Basij will be out on their scooters wielding their impunity.
Nitpick, here. The US is absolutely not a literally tribal society. Here in the US, we use “tribal” pejoratively and figuratively, to describe a situation where people are polarized into political “tribes”. That’s not the same thing as a society that’s literally tribal, in a non pejorative sense. In fact, I’m not sure “tribal” is the best word, given the pejorative implications, and the fact that what we are really looking at are clans, not tribes.
It’s not a matter of being less civilized - it’s a different way of organizing society, one where loyalty to a familiar group and ties to that group matter more than national loyalty.
US society is polarized, but it’s not clan based. Neither is Iranian society.
Sorta paid lawless thugs get what they want already in the form of payoffs and the taking of things from people who don’t want to be beaten or wiped out. Its what thugs do, a type of controlled chaos. Being paid means being controlled. Neither the thugs or the goverment actually wants this. The thugs like operating in a gray area, and the goverment wants to be able to disasscoiate themselves from the thugs actions.
You said that much better than I did.
I could see this happening. What scares me is the idea of both republican presidents and republican governors agreeing to pardon anyone who commits violence against leftists. There would still be refuge in blue states where governors will not pardon state crimes (most violent crimes are state crimes) but I could see republican governors in red states pardoning stage crimes while the president pardons federal crimes.
We are very tribalistic along racial, religious and ideological lines. I don’t know if there is a better term for it, but most of America’s problems fundamentally come down to one side consisting of white, christian, native born patriarchs on one side and everyone else on the other side.
And Persia has been a nation since ancient times.
There was an Iranian family in my kid’s nursery school that celebrated a pre-islamic Persian seasonal festival. (I know that because the school’s policy was to celebrate every holiday any family wanted to “sponsor”, and they celebrated that one, along with Sukkot, the lunar New Year, and all the major Christian holidays. It was run by an ecumenical church.) My husband’s father’s widow also married an Iranian, and they celebrated some Persian stuff, as well.
I think Persians are at least as into being Persian as Americans are into being American. Probably moreso.
Here’s a list of which countries have universal conscription. One is Israel, but men have to serve three years and women have to serve two years. Four countries in northern Europe have or will have conscription for both men and women - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Netherlands. To be more exact, Denmark will have conscription extended from just men to women also in 2026. Netherlands has a law that both men and women are conscripted in wartime. In peacetime, both men and women just receive a letter saying that they can be conscripted in wartime.
Eritrea and North Korea have conscription for both men and women. Chad, Cuba, Myanmar, Morocco, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Ivory Coast, China, and East Timor have something like conscription for both men and women.
But that’s not tribal at all in the sense people mean when referring to places like Afghanistan. They literally are tribal in social organization. The USA is NOTHING like that.
That’s not “tribal” in the sense of clans, IE familial groups typically determined patrilinealy.
Nowruz? The Zoroastrian New Year? I had a colleague at work who celebrated that. I’ve worked with a few Iranians, it’s definitely different to the Arab countries.
Here is an example of what “tribal” means in some Arabic societies, and how completely different it is from modern American society:,
A US Army soldier was stationed a couple years ago in Afghanistan. He was a skilled electronics technician whose job was to sit at a workshop table all day and repair radio gear, etc, One day after a long, tiring shift, he was about to go back to his barracks to sleep..but a line of supply trucks pulled into the base, and this soldier was told to go unload them. Hard, heavy work-- and he muttered to himself, complaining about how it wasn’t his job, why not find somebody else to do it, etc.
Now here’s the point of the story:
A local Afghan citizen who spoke English and was employed at the base as a translator heard the soldier complaining to himself. The Afghan guy looked at the soldier with surprise, and said “why are you doing that heavy work, just because that officer over there told you to?”
And the soldier answered “what do you mean “why”? He’s the commanding officer, and he gave me the order”.
And the Afghan guy said “but he’s obviously not from your tribe–so why do you obey him?”
The officer was black, and the soldier was white…
To the local Afghan guy, who for his entire life has known only a tribal society, it was clear that the soldier and the officer were from different tribes, and therefor, it was obvious, and perfectly natural, that you don’t have to obey an order from him, To this guy,the social order is based exclusively on tribal membership, and there is no higher authority, no system of law which apply to everybody equally.
My “cite” for this story is a post I once read someplace on the internet (reddit) about 3 years ago. Obviously, the source does not meet standards we expect here at the Dope. But to me, the story has a serious ring of truth to it; it was written in first person by a soldier who included enough detail and military jargon to make it believable to me..
Should be noted that Afghanistan is about as Arabic as Iran.
But about as tribal as many Arab states are. Unlike Iran.
All the discussion on the differences between Arabs and Persians is fascinating (really, genuinely interested) but I think the question with regard to the OP is does the Iranian military suffer the same deficiencies as Arab militaries do?
No. It suffers from an entirely different set of deficiencies, that have more to do with Russian style corruption than Arab style tribal structure of society.