The Persian military industrial complex
There are 80 million Iranians. The nation's high birth rate has made it one of the youngest country's in the world. Two-thirds of Iran's population know no other government than the absolutist clerical regime which seized power from the Western-backed Shah in 1978. Whereas there have been tentative steps towards liberalism since, a conservative faction of the theocracy, led by spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, retains huge power, including the final say on defence and foreign policy. Iran has no diplomatic relations with US.
In Iran, 70% of industry is state-owned. All strategic heavy industries, particularly armaments, are state-owned. The petroleum and gas industries were nationalized in 1979. Banking is state-owned. Radio and TV broadcasting are a state monopoly and satellite dishes are banned. State-owned Iran Air carries three quarters of all Iranian air passengers. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance controls all 1,500 libraries. There were about 500 newspapers a few years ago but the government has closed scores recently.
The gross domestic product, fuelled by petroleum and natural gas exports, has been growing at about 5% per year for the last fifteen years. The manufacturing sector is growing at 10% per year. The Third Five Year Plan, announced March 2000, targeted the creation of 765,000 jobs and maintaining 6% GDP growth. Key to achieving this is subsidizing and protecting metal mining, smelting and manufacturing, and the core of this policy is state armament procurements. The 2004 national budget called for further supplementing the original amount set aside for armaments. Military spending accounts for around 8% of GDP down from the near 20% of GDP during the height of the Iran-Iraq War, but overall output is three to four times larger now than then.
Iran's military industrial complex is almost self-sufficient and vertically integrated. Its explosives and chemical weapons are petroleum-derived and hence are an easy spin-off of its sprawling commercial petrochemical infrastructure. Metal fabricating and smelting have become major export industries and are fed by a domestic mining industry yielding 11 million tonnes of iron ore per year along with substantial amounts of copper, lead, zinc, manganese, chrome and coal. Iran's steel industry is by far the largest in the Middle East. Minerals are shipped from mine to smelter to foundry to factory to army base along a growing network of state-owned railways.
Iran's proven reserves of oil are 130,000 billion barrels while current oil extraction is about 3.5 billion barrels per year. Newly discovered reserves and enhanced technology, on-shore and off, keep the proven reserve growing more than enough to replenish the amount lost to extraction. Natural gas reserves are 23 trillion cubic metres, the second largest in the world. With petroleum prices extraordinarily high, the Iranian state treasury's foreign hard currency holdings and precious metals—the Ayatollah's war chest—is approaching $30 (US) billion. Foreign investment in the energy sector is primarily supplied by Russians and French corporations. Iran's ballooning electricity supply is derived from burning natural gas (76.5%) and petroleum (19%).
The Army is big
The Iranian Army numbers 350,000, of whom 250,000 are conscripts. The Iranian government demands 21-month mandatory military service from all fit young men. The Army Reserves, mostly ex-Army volunteers, total close to 400,000. The Revolutionary Guard numbers 125,000 and controls the “popular mobilization army” of about 300,000 which can number up to one million during wartime. An elite 40,000 troop ground force is under the command of the Minister of the Interior. In a popular war, the Iranian Army General Staff could quickly field one million infantry armed with an array of locally manufactured AK-47s, RPG-7s, and light mortars. Iran has been self-sufficient in the manufacture of these and other infantry weapons for over thirty years. This infantry, when given access to Iran's civilian multi-million vehicle fleet of light trucks, cars and buses, remains the main threat to American forces stationed in Iraq. The Iran-Iraq border is 1,400 km long and the US and UK together have a grand total of about 100,000 fighting troops in Iraq.
The Persians won't come in “human waves” as they did against Saddam. The Mullahs previously attacked in 40,000 infantry formations, often bulked up with rows of teenage boys roped together at the wrist and carrying wooden rifles. Against main battle tanks and mobile 155mm artillery this won't succeed. But by now the Persians have armour galore.
Iran's main battle tank is the “Zulfiqar” developed by the “Construction Crusade,” an arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. The Zulfiqar is a modified Russian T-72 tank manufactured in Iran under a licence prohibiting re-export. Between 1993 and 2000 Iran purchased 235 T-72s from Russia but now make their own. The Zulfiqar has a distinctive box-shaped turret unlike the characteristic boat-shaped turret of the T-72 and appears to have a different exhaust system. The Zulfiqar is a 40 tonne vehicle with a 1,000 hp diesel engine and a 120 mm smooth bore gun. For the Zulfigar/T-72 fleet, the Ammunition Group of the Iranian Defence Industries Organization mass produces both a standard High Explosive 23 kilogram tank shell firing a three kilogram warhead out the muzzle at 850 meters per second. They can hit targets 10 kilometres away.
The Ammunition Group also manufacture volumes of faster, lighter anti-armour warheads with a muzzle velocity of 910 meters per second—effective against every American military vehicle with the possible exception of the M1A1 Ambrams tank, to a range of 2 km. Iran also possesses several hundred older lighter 105 mm T-72Z tanks which are Soviet-built units given a substantial upgrade at the Shahid Kolah Dooz Industrial Complex's tank modernizing facility. Production of these is complete, however they are still in the process of placing explosive-reactive armour-packs onto the older units. This armour consists of bricks that explode outward when impacted by heavy ordnance.
In the late 1990s Iran began production of the “Tosan” line of rapid response tanks armed with heavy calibre machine guns and 90 mm guns. Iran's operational tank fleet numbers around 2,000 units. Against this Persian cavalry US and UK forces stationed in Iraq have about several hundred armoured vehicles, Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, weaponized APCs and a few self-propelled howitzers.
One of the Persian militarist's prize achievements is the “Boraq” armoured personnel carrier which was conceived during the Iran-Iraq war but did not roll off the assembly lines of the Shahid Kolahdooz Complex until 1997. The Boraq is a thick-skinned, 13 tonne, fully amphibious tracked vehicle with seating for a crew of three and eight soldiers and carrying a fifty calibre machine gun on top. Other variants carry a 120 mm mortar or an anti-tank missile launcher. The Boraq is a marriage between the Russian BMP-1 hull and engine and the American (United Defense) M-113 wheel and track system. The Iranians still have over 300 BMP-1s in service while the US technology dates back to the days of the Shah. Fully loaded, the vehicle can travel 65 kph for 500 kilometres. While the Boraq is still in production and used in active service, the Iranians are also bringing two newer models of APC online, all advertised for export.
One of the Iranian military's greatest threats are its self-propelled howitzers. The Shahid Industrial Complex manufactures two models of self-propelled howitzer, a 36 tonne 155mm, and a 17.5 tonne 122 mm. All parts of these weapon systems are locally produced using Iranian steel including their 850 horsepower diesel engines and their 8 gear transmissions. The 155 mm “Thunder 2” self-propelled howitzer has inch-thick welded steel armour requiring a near direct hit to destroy it. The Thunder 2 can travel at 65 kph with a range of 450 km and can fire four, several-pound, rocket-assist high explosive projectiles per minute to a distance of 30 km. The Thunder 2 is a knock-off of the American (United Defense Industries) M109 of which 440 were sold to the Shah, many still operational.
The Thunder 2 has been in quantity production for several years. The self-propelled fleet is supplemented by a large number of towed howitzers, both 155 mm and 122 mm, manufactured by Hadid Armament Industries Group. These weapons are towed into battle by 6 x 6 ten tonne trucks which can also carry substantial amounts of ammunition.
The Iranian army can field three to four thousand artillery pieces; over one thousand of those are armoured and self propelled and can drive from the Iraqi border to within range of Baghdad in 90 minutes. During combat they emit heavy camouflaging smoke. The Americans have only a few hundred field artillery pieces, and in the crucial artillery-to-artillery cannonades, the vulnerability of open air, towed artillerymen to shrapnel fire makes the armoured self-propelled King. The Persians have fifty times what the Americans in Iraq have in terms of armoured self-propelled artillery.
Iran manufactures two dozen models of artillery rocket. These weapons carry no inertial guidance systems and are simply aimed with standard artillery arc and angle calculations and thus are not very accurate. They can hit large targets such as cities, military bases, and large concentrations of enemy force but not moving ships or specific buildings. They range in size from the 12 tube 105 mm launchers towed behind pick-up trucks that ripple-fire rockets with 6 kg warheads to a distance of 8 km, to the “Zelzal 2” which requires a 3 axle Mercedes truck to carry a single round.
Manufactured by Shahid Baghari Industries, the Zelzal 2 can launch a 600 kg high explosive bomb to a distance of 200 kilometres. About 90% of US forces and Western civilians in Iraq are within 200 km of Iranian territory. They could hit Camp Bushmaster near Najaf, Camp Anaconda north of Tikrit, or Baghdad's Green Zone with sustained volleys of high-speed 1,200 lb. bombs made of explosives several times more volatile than TNT. Centcom HQ in Qatar, British facilities near Basra, and numerous Saudi oil fields and fuel storage facilities are also within range of the Zelzal 2. The Zelzals have been in volume production for years and although offered for export, there are no known buyers. It's a cut-throat business.
A few years ago, attention was focused on the Shahab missile programme, with few caring about the Zelzals. Zelzal production was at a lower rate. Zelzals can't hit Israel or, at the time, any significant numbers of Western assets. Now Centcom has a quarter million uniformed personnel within 200 km of the Iranian frontier and an equal number of Western civil servants and mercenaries alongside them. When the Generals retire from their poker games in the better brothels of Baghdad, they count Zelzals to drift to sleep, not Shahabs.
Persian military industries (Aerospace Industries Organization Tehran) also manufacturers a copy of the US TOW anti-tank missile which they call the “Toophan.” The fabled Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s consisted of Ollie North and friends delivering thousands of TOWs to Iran just in time to stop dead a dangerous Iraqi armoured advance into Iranian territory. Having learned first hand the effectiveness of the TOW, Iran now manufactures enough for its own purposes and sells the surplus on the international market. (They are also supplying Hezbollah with Toophans).
The Toophan 2 is a 1.5 metre, 19 kilogram tube-launched missile carrying a four kilogram explosive charge. It is connected to a joy stick by four kilometres of dental-floss-thin wire. It hits speeds of 310 metres a second and can punch through over two feet of solid steel. They have recently developed a laser-beam-riding version of the same missile. The same plant also manufactures a Soviet designed anti-tank missile. |
