Taipei: Israeli strikes on Iran on Friday and Tehran’s vows of reprisals have brought the two Middle East adversaries closer to an all-out war, which also threatens to draw in the United States, at least to some degree.
Iran boasts a large standing force but also relies on proxies and undercover operations that have been severely disabled in recent months by US and Israeli actions. Israel, meanwhile, relies on both subterfuge and robust regular ground and air forces that are apparently unmatched in the region. Though roughly equal in the number of troops, the two militaries bring strikingly different tactics and firepower.
Where does Iran stand?
On paper, Iran would seem to have an advantage in numbers, with 88 million people and a land area of 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) compared to Israel’s 9 million people and 22,000 square kilometers (8,500). Militarily however, those numbers mean little.
Iran’s troops are divided between the regular armed forces, generally commissioned with guarding Iran’s borders and carrying out more conventional military tasks, and the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, including the elite Quds Force, the strategic missile command and the cyberforce.
The regular forces command the bulk of the troops — around 600,000 men — and standard equipment, while the Revolutionary Guard has about 200,000 personnel split between various divisions. Along with Iran’s proxies, its conventional forces are believed to have been heavily degraded by Israeli and US military operations over the past year.
Iran’s military equipment is a hodge-podge, including some provided by the Soviet Union and others by the US prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, along with more recent Russian additions.
With an estimated 350 antiquated planes in its air force, it lags far behind Israel in both quantity and quality. Iran, however, does have the ability to produce a wide range of UAV’s and similar equipment, typified by the Shahed attack drones it has sold to Russia in large numbers for use in the war in Ukraine.
The security of its top commanders has been a recurring problem from Iran, with the head of the Revolutionary Guards Gen Hossein Salami and Gen Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, among those who killed in Friday’s strikes in Tehran. Top nuclear scientists were also killed. Other senior commanders have been killed in recent strikes around the region.
Iran’s nuclear program has advanced in recent years, and it is believed to have developed enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels to produce multiple nuclear weapons in a matter of months if it took the decision to do so.
How does Israel compare?
Israel’s formidable land, sea and air forces are derived from both the latest US and European technology as well as a robust domestic defence industry that can design, build and sustain a full range of armaments, allowing it to take on opponents on multiple fronts at the same time.
For a small nation it also has a considerable supply of troops, with about 170,000 active duty forces and another 400,000 reserves.