BY: NASIRU MUHAMMAD WAZIRI, KANO
Understanding the international system goes beyond watching daily world news, TV, and radio programs by analysts or calling some gypsies abroad.
There are tools employed to balance the power of the international system.
Terms like; unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar are systems that operate the global leadership structure interchangeably depending on the circumstances on the ground.
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Unipolarity is a condition in which one state under the condition of international anarchy enjoys a preponderance of power and faces no competitor states. The U.S. has enjoyed such privilege for quite a long term.
However, the raising of Russian President Vladimir Putin has changed the narrative of the current world leadership to bipolarity.
Bipolarity is a distribution of power in which two states have a preponderance of power.
In bipolarity, spheres of influence and alliance systems have frequently developed around each pole.
The Middle East is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage as a replacement for the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Currently Middle East now includes some parts of North Africa and Egypt, it also includes: Yamen, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Syria to mention but a few…with a Population: of 371 million (2010)
ISRAEL FAULT LINES
Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists; unleashed the Stuxnet virus inside Iran; backed various terrorist groups inside Iran; blown up Iranian pipelines; and bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Iran did not start this, Iranian is merely defending itself.
Consequently, It turns out that the attack was a form of retaliation to avenge the death of senior revolutionary guards commander Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi (also known as Hassan Mahadawi) who was assassinated in Damascus on April 1st by Israel, which Iran has publicly vowed to revenge, and this action might lead to finding a way to make peace through diplomacy or it’s WAR.
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Moreover, Iran has close ties with Lebanon and considers it an ally. Iran also has close ties with the Lebanese political party Hezbollah and its militia force to whom it reportedly provides as much as $100 million in supplies and weaponry per year.
Iran has been a staunch supporter of both Lebanon and Hezbollah against Israel.
Why is Iran’s military relevant right now?
After Israel attacked the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Tehran responded with a threat to avenge the killings of its military personnel. Israel has said the compound was a legitimate target because it was being used by military commanders.
Officials from the United States and Israel assessed that Iran’s response was likely to be launched from its territory.
That was what the Iranians did after President Donald J. Trump ordered the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in 2020, fired ballistic missiles at two American military bases in Iraq and wounding over 100 American soldiers.
Israeli officials have said they will respond to any attack by Iran with a counterattack, which could prompt more retaliation from Iran and possibly expand into a wider regional war. There is even a chance that a conflict of that sort could drag in the United States, although Washington has made clear it had nothing to do with the Damascus attack.
While Iran is expected to mount an attack within days on Israel, U.S. and Iranian officials said Friday that they did not expect the United States or its military forces to be targeted.
In any case, President Biden has pledged “ironclad” support for Israel in the event of an Iranian assault.
Analysts say that Iran’s adversaries, primarily the United States and Israel, have avoided direct military strikes on Iran for decades, not wishing to tangle with Tehran’s complex military apparatus. Instead, Israel and Iran have been engaged in a long shadow war via air, sea, land, and cyberattacks, and Israel has covertly targeted military and nuclear facilities inside Iran and killed commanders and scientists.
“There is a reason Iran has not been struck,” said Afshon Ostovar, an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and an expert on Iran’s military. “It’s not that Iran’s adversaries fear Israel. It’s that they realize any war against Iran is a very serious war.”
What sort of military threat does Iran pose?
The Iranian armed forces are among the largest in the Middle East, with at least 580,000 active-duty personnel and about 200,000 trained reserve personnel divided among the traditional army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to an annual assessment last year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The army and the Guards each have separate and active ground, 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.
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The Guards also operate the Quds Force, an elite unit in charge of arming, training, and supporting the network of proxy militias throughout the Middle East known as the “axis of resistance.” These militias include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militia groups in Syria and Iraq, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
Power by Proxy: How Iran Shapes the Mideast
A guide to the armed groups that let Iran extend its influence throughout the region.
The commander in chief of Iran’s armed forces is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all major decisions.
While the proxy militias are not counted as part of Iran’s armed forces, analysts say they are considered an allied regional force battle-ready, heavily armed, and ideologically loyal and could come to Iran’s aid if it was attacked.
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“The level of support and types of systems Iran has provided for nonstate actors is unprecedented in terms of drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles,” said Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iran’s military at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Berlin. “They could be viewed as part of Iran’s military capability, especially Hezbollah, which has the closest strategic relationship with Iran.”
Drone models at an Iranian defense industry exhibition in Tehran last year. Tehran is eager to build a major export business with its drones.
What kinds of weapons does Iran have?
For decades, Iran’s military strategy has been anchored in deterrence, emphasizing the development of precision and long-range missiles, drones, and air defenses. It has built a large fleet of speedboats and some small submarines that are capable of disrupting shipping traffic and global energy supplies that pass through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has one of the largest arsenals of ballistic missiles and drones in the Middle East, Mr. Ostovar said. That includes cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, as well as ballistic missiles with ranges up to 2,000 kilometers, or more than 1,200 miles.
These have the capacity and range to hit any target in the Middle East, including Israel.
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In recent years, Tehran has assembled a large inventory of drones with ranges of around 1,200 to 1,550 miles and capable of flying low to evade radar, according to experts and Iranian commanders who have given public interviews to the state news media. Iran has made no secret of the buildup, displaying its trove of drones and missiles during military parades, and has ambitions to build a large export business in drones. Iran’s drones are being used by Russia in Ukraine and have surfaced in the conflict in Sudan.
The country’s bases and storage facilities are widely dispersed, buried deep underground, and fortified with air defenses, making them difficult to destroy with airstrikes, experts say.
Where does Iran get its weapons?International sanctions have cut Iran off from high-tech weaponry and military equipment manufactured abroad, like tanks and fighter jets.
During Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, few countries were willing to sell weapons to Iran. When Ayatollah Khamenei became Iran’s supreme leader in 1989, a year after the war ended, he commissioned the Guards to develop a domestic weapons industry and poured resources into the effort, which was widely reported in the Iranian news media.
He wanted to ensure that Iran would never again have to rely on foreign powers for its defense needs.
Today, Iran manufactures a large quantity of missiles and drones domestically and has prioritized that defense production, experts said.
Its attempts to make armored vehicles and large naval vessels have met with mixed results. It also imports small submarines from North Korea while expanding and modernizing its domestically produced fleet.
Some of the fighter jets in Iran’s arsenal include American-built F4 Phantoms, decades-old aircraft sold to Iran before the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
How do other countries see Iran’s military, and what are its weaknesses?
Iran’s military is viewed as one of the strongest in the region in terms of equipment, cohesion, experience, and quality of personnel, but it lags far behind the power and sophistication of the armed forces of the United States, Israel, and some European countries, experts said.
Iran’s greatest weakness is its air force. Much of the country’s aircraft date from the era of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who led Iran from 1941 to 1979, and many have been disabled for lack of spare parts. The country also bought a small fleet from Russia in the 1990s, experts said.
Iran’s tanks and armored vehicles are old, and the country has only a few large naval vessels, experts said. Two intelligence gathering vessels, the Saviz and Behshad, deployed on the Red Sea, have aided the Houthis in identifying Israeli-owned ships for attacks, American officials have said.
Will Israel’s attack disrupt Iran’s military?
The assassinations are expected to have a short-term impact on Iran’s regional operations, having eliminated commanders with years of experience and relationships with the heads of the allied militias. Nevertheless, the chain of command for the armed forces inside Iran remains intact, experts say, and those leaders would be the ones directing strikes on Israel or other targets and defending Iranian territory if war were to break out.
The strength of Iran.
Before 1979, Iran’s economic development was rapid. Traditionally an agrarian society, by the 1970s the country had undergone significant industrialization and economic modernization. This pace of growth had slowed dramatically by 1978 as capital flight reached $30 to $40 billion in 1980 US dollars just before the revolution.
Historical GDP per capita development in Iran
After the Revolution of 1979, Iran’s government proceeded with 4 reforms:
First, they nationalized all industries, including the NIOC, and all Iranian banks.
The new Constitution divided the economy into 3 different sectors, namely “State”, “Cooperative” and “Private”, with the majority being state-owned businesses.
The Government started using central planning to control the economy, having the Supreme Leader, the President, and Majlis creating 5-year socio-economic plans.
The State took control of setting prices and subsidies. The government’s long-term objectives since the revolution have been economic independence, full employment, and a comfortable standard of living for citizens, but at the end of the 20th century, the country’s economy faced many obstacles. Iran’s population more than doubled between 1980 and 2000 and grew increasingly younger. Although a relatively large number of Iranians are farmers, agricultural production has consistently fallen since the 1960s. By the late 1990s, Iran had become a major importer of food. At that time, economic hardship in the countryside resulted in vast numbers of people moving to cities.
The eight-year war with Iraq claimed at least 300,000 Iranian lives and injured more than 500,000. The cost of the war to the country’s economy was some $500 billion. After hostilities with Iraq ceased in 1988, the government tried to develop the country’s communication, transportation, manufacturing, health care, education, and energy sectors (including its prospective nuclear power facilities) and began the process of integrating its communication and transportation infrastructure with that of neighboring states.
Since 2004, Supreme Leader Khamenei and sitting President have tried to implement reforms that will lead to the privatization of Iran but they haven’t w Borked out yet, making Iran a command economy in the transition towards a market economy.
A popular American saying in Texas or Tennasey says Fool me once shame on you, fool me two times shame on me.
Only time will tell how it will end.
WAZIRI can be reached on:
nasirumuhammedwaziri@gmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not in any way reflect the views of GLOBAL TRACKER.