Iran: " Hegemon"or "Weakling"?
Iran: Hegemon or weakling?
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has put together a slideshow (pdf) with lots of data about Iran's conventional and unconventional military capabilities, and the risks that each pose. There's a factoid or a bullet point in there for just about every perspective
via tigerhawk
ABF, for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran
3 comments:
Thank you for finding this. I do not have time right now to listen to the whole thing, but I shall try later. :)
Rosemary: I know. It's a great find.
Hegemon or weakling? Traditionally hegemonic locally, but with an attitude towards spreading global instability. The numbers, as pointed out, belie the operational capabilities, which have been in steep and stark decline for the National Army. Iran does not rely on its conscript military for much of anything beyond defense and pure defense. All internal suppression is done through the Revolutionary/Special Guards, Basij, secret police and hired mercenary islamic thugs from the 'stans (ex-Russian Republics stretching from Georgia to Kazakhstan). As noted the force internal to Iran is a 'for show only' force, typical of more Arabic forces in the region. Norvell B. de Atkine goes through that very well and points out how social structure gives the foundation for military capability in Why Arabs Lose Wars. That is a quintissential work not only for Arab people but the Middle East and, more generally, any Nation or region with highly factionalized and authoritarian rulership.
Militarily, via traditional military considerations, Iran is not much of a power, about on par with Algeria, say, in combat effectiveness. What Iran has done is create semi-autonomous Foreign Legions that act under guidance, if not direct control of Tehran. Iran arms, trains and pays these organizations far *better* than their internal conscript forces so as to make them more effective. The petro-economy has funded bases in: Lebanon, Bosnia, Chechnya, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Albania and possibly even in Indonesia. Further the training is spread out to other groups with affiliate status to Hezbollah. This works via the means shown in my posts: Template of Terror - for transnational terrorism as a whole, The web of the supernote - for how State sponsorship diffuses into the transnational terrorist internetwork, a review of the first 6 months of Iranian external affairs in 2000 - examining how Iran moves in accordance to its views for spreading terror, a look at Iranian influence in Bosnia - and looking at how transnational terrorism works with international organized crime syndicates, and the systemic view of Iran's oil problems.
Taken as a whole, localized threats are one thing, but the moves of the regime in Iran has been that towards larger global presence for destabilization and radicalization. This appears to have created numerous 'safe havens' for the regime to disperse to if Iran, itself, falls either to internal or external reasons. By now the work with FARC and the various organized crime groups has given Hezbollah inroads into a low-level but sustainable funding stream that would require a bit of diminution of activities, but would *not* impact the skills and outlooks of those dispersed groups.
The roundup I did on Syrian WMDs examines that one may actually neglect their own regular armed forces and move steadily towards a full suite of WMD capability quietly, and slowly exploit 'friends' for longer term gain. Syria is the 'weak sister' of the Middle East, but seems set to be the final nuclear processing and finishing house in cooperation with Iran. That will give Syria the final piece of their WMD triad for warheads: chem, bio and nuclear. They have also steadily acquired and built long-range ballistic missiles of the SCUD-D and NoDong variety. By cooperating with Iran to do large scale nuclear separation faster than it can be done in Syria and gathering the team necessary to do final weapons creation and testing, Syria is working to gain its final safeguard against attack. You do not NEED a capable military system in order to be a threat. Syria's game is highly cynical and it has exploited richer parterns for 'promised position' in the Middle East and has rarely delivered. Their long term work with Iran on Hezbollah can be seen as creating a distraction/buffer to actual Syrian motives so that they can continue being quiet while amassing a their entire WMD component system. And that is *with* an economy so weak that not much in the way of sanctions will have much effect on it. A highly shrewd move to play a weakness to a strength: with so little in the way of economic outlook there is little that can be used as a trade sanction regime against Syria.
At some point the end will come for the Iranian-Syrian axis and it will dissolve. When and how is speculation, at this point. But the Middle East will be in a much worse position if it is due to nuclear capability by *either* regime.
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