"How strong is Iran's military?" Topic

"Iran has vowed to retaliate after its most powerful military commander was killed by a US drone strike at Baghdad airport.

"Severe revenge awaits" those behind the attack on General Qasem Soleimani, said Iran's Supreme Leader.

So what do we know about Iran's military capabilities?…"
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Amicalement
Armand

A 3rd world country that cannot properly feed its own population. Hmmmmm, let me think about that question for a moment…

They have a lot of soldiers and rockets/missiles, and their leaders can be quite fanatical as shown by the Iran-Iraq War.

Some decent quality jets, including the old US F-14s, as well as some newer models too from various nations, including those that fled from Iraq.

Their navy is very weak, but they do have a lot of speedboats. Some of them are probably equipped, or can easily equipped with large amounts of explosives, making them into crude suicide boats.

Water-skiing anyone?

"Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons programme, and has previously said it does not want one. But it does have many of the elements required and the knowledge to create a military nuclear capability.

In 2015, the US government under President Obama estimated that Iran only needed two to three months to produce enough nuclear material to make a weapon".

The statement above about their lack of a nuclear weapons program is just patently false, despite assertions to the contrary. Statements from Iran's leaders in the last 24 hours demonstrate that, as well as US negotiations and payments under the previous administration to forestall that until our last guy was out of office.

They don't have so many people and "secret" underground facilities working on refining uranium to high levels, and ICBMs for medical research, and/or putting satellites into orbit. They can hire people to do the latter far more affordably than doing it themselves. Also, the Israelis captured a cache of documents about their nuke weapons in a daring commando raid against a virtually unguarded facility a few years back too.

The jury is out on whether they have nukes or not.

They've been saying that Iran could have nuclear warheads in 3 – 6 months for the last 20 – 25 years, so by that measure, they could have more than a couple of dozen, low-yield, crude weapons, and/or dirty bombs now.

Here's a link to info about the daring Israeli raid, and what they uncovered:

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Here are a couple of brief excerpts from the article:

"The papers show these guys were working on nuclear bombs".

"The Iranian program to build a nuclear weapon was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized than most suspected in 2003, when Project Amad was declared ended, according to outside nuclear experts consulted by The Times. Iran had foreign help, though Israeli officials held back any documents indicating where it came from. Much was clearly from Pakistan, but officials said other foreign experts were also involved — though they may not have been working for their governments".

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

I think the strength of Iran's military is an irrelevance. Short of Japan, Russia or the China, no one can stop the US from obtaining aerial dominance and striking at will.

I think the US would easily obtain dominance even over large NATO allies ala UK, Germany or France as these are largely demilitarised and lack the capacity to sustain casualties. All hypothetical of course!

The main thing is the US would struggle to conquer Iran without significant risk. It's a massive country (nearly 4 times larger than Iraq) with a population of 81 million (double of Iraq) and a lot of terrain that is unfavourable to mechanised warfare.

And unlike Iraq there are no natural allies ala the Kurds were in Iraq.

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And unlike Iraq there are no natural allies ala the Kurds were in Iraq.

According to that article perhaps you might re-evaluate your thinking.

Coalburner, that's not really talking about natural allies nor is any resistance well organised (not that I know of and I could be wrong). It could also be whatever anti-regime Persians rise up as well but it's an unknown.

The Iraqi Kurds by 2003 had their own pseudo-state, armed forces and were well organised. They controlled a large chunk of Iraq.

The Shias in Iraq were also happy to depose the Sunni Ba'ath Party but their attempts at organised resistance were crushed in the 1990s.

Iraq's population distribution was also more fragmented with about 50% of the population being Shia and 15% Kurd. The Arab Sunnis were a minority (which is why the British put them in power much like the Alawites in Syria). Note since 2003 the power pendulum swung to the Shias (hence many Sunnis supported ISIS).

Iran's population is more homogenized – 63% Persian, 18% Turkic, 3% Kurdish and the rest being a variety of others.

Iran's religious population is also 90% Shia and only 9% Sunni.

The Turkic (mainly Azerbaijanis) and Kurdish minority's loyalties are unknown but I suspect the Azerbaijanis will play according to whatever Turkey wants (Azerbaijan and Turkey have been chumming it up big time). The Kurds have been somewhat stabbed in the back by the Americans in recent times so might side with the Iranians or stay neutral.

I was in Naval Intelligence during the dust up with Iran were we sank boats and accidentally shot down an airliner. That was pretty ominous stuff.

Not one person in my circle then thought there would be a real war between the two powers despite those very real actions. It amazes me that people are freaking out and even talking about reinstituting the draft over what seems like far less ominous actions than the last go round. Are our collective memories really that short, or is everyone's hyperbole meter set to overload?

Hell, we didn't go to war after the Iranians funded the attack on the Marine Barracks in 83. If that wasn't enough to trigger war, I don't see where this current tit-for-tat should trigger anything on the scale everyone seems to be fearing.

And no one in their right mind should consider an Iran invasion. We considered that nuts in the late 80s, and no amount of tech changes since then would justify changing that assessment today. Iran's population is far too large and the distances far too great for anything short of full scale invasion. Iran is hardly unified, but one thing all Iranians have in great abundance is pride and an invasion would make them come together instantly. I see no stomach for invasion from anyone in the Armed forces, let alone the public.

I feel like everyone has lost their collective minds.

Insert ‘get off my lawn' here.

TGerritsen, I agree.

I suspect the situation will continue tit-for-tat until Iran definitely has the A-bomb and then things will settle down like they did in North Korea.

I think the ballistic missile attacks on specific ABs demonstrate a level of sophistication not generally associated with so-called "rogue" ME nations.

In fact, I can imagine Hezbollah complaining that Iran keeps all the Gucci kit for itself …

Honestly? I think that's it. Both sides have flexed.
Iran's attacks were timed to create the least possible casualties, and I think/hope they'll call it a day now.

TGerritson, I think you're right, the world has lost its collective memory and common sense.

I tell ya, Trump is genius. Talk about out of the box in today's kooky oversensitive world.

Yeah he could tell how the Iranians were going to react, shake in their collective boots and go home, save face with a little fireworks, only careful, don't cross Trumps red line and don't kill any Americans. the Iyatollah fears regime change more than anything. See Praying Mantis '88.

Uparmoured, I agree that Trump guessed it right but anyone with half a brain knows that the main objective of any regime (authoritarian or democratic) is to survive. That includes the Iranians (and the Norks as well).

The Iranians aren't stupid. Killing a bucket load of Americans in a symbolic strike risks antagonising or galvanising the Americans into a full scale attack with threat of regime change.

I think Iran's strike was a case of "we can if we want to." It was in fact a very gutsy move to directly strike American bases.

I think the big ramification of all this is Iran has openly withdrawn from Obama's treaty.

And I suspect if Iran gets the nukes, there will be no real change to regional status quo. The nukes will be a guarantee against regime change operations.

The Iranians and Sunni Arabs will continue their proxy wars and nothing will have changed.

The real changes will occur at the point oil has been largely replaced and no longer crucial to the global economy or alternatively if the US continues its power spiral to the point it no longer exercises as much influence relative to the Chinese or the Arabs themselves.