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Iran
Index
Figure 10. Strait of Hormuz and Vicinity
The importance of the armed forces in Iran flows from Iran's
long history of successive military empires. For over 2,500 years,
starting with the conquests of the Achaemenid rulers of the sixth
century B.C., Iran developed a strong military tradition. Drawing
on a vast manpower pool in western Asia, the Achaemenid rulers
raised an army of 360,000, from which they could send expeditions
to Europe and Africa.
Iranian early military history boasts the epic performances of
such great leaders as Cyrus the Great and Darius I. The last great
Iranian military ruler was Nader Shah, whose army defeated the
Mughals of India in 1739. Since then, however, nearly all efforts
to conquer more territory or check encroaching empires have failed.
During much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Iran
was divided and occupied by British and Russian military forces.
When their interests coincided in 1907, London and St. Petersburg
entered into the Anglo-Russian Agreement, which formally divided
Iran into two spheres of influence. During World War I, the weak
and ineffective Qajar Dynasty, allegedly hindered by the effects of
the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907, could not prevent
increasing British and Russian military interventions, despite
Iran's declaration of neutrality
(see World War I
, ch. 1).
In 1918 the Qajar armed forces consisted of four separate
foreign-commanded military units. Several provincial and tribal
forces could also be called on during an emergency, but their
reliability was highly questionable. More often than not,
provincial and tribal forces opposed the government's
centralization efforts, particularly because Tehran was perceived
to be under the dictate of foreign powers. Having foreign officers
in commanding positions over Iranian troops added to these tribal
and religious concerns. Loyal, disciplined, and well trained, the
most effective government unit was the 8,000-man Persian Cossacks
Brigade. Created in 1879 and commanded by Russian officers until
the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, after which its command passed into
Iranian hands, the brigade represented the core of the new Iranian
armed forces. Swedish officers commanded the 8,400-man Gendarmerie
(later the Imperial Gendarmerie and after 1979 the Islamic Iranian
Gendarmerie), organized in 1911 as the first internal security
force. The 6,000-man South Persia Rifles unit was financed by
Britain and commanded by British officers from its inception in
1916. Its primary task was to combat tribal forces allegedly
stirred up by German agents during World War I. The Qajar palace
guard, the Nizam, commanded by a Swedish officer, was a force
originally consisting of 2,000 men, although it deteriorated
rapidly in numbers because of rivalries. Thus, during World War I
the 24,400 troops in these four separate military units made up one
of the weakest forces in Iranian history.
Upon signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and
Turkey on December 15, 1917, Russia put in motion its eventual
withdrawal from Iran, preparing the way for an indigenous Iranian
military. A hitherto little-known colonel, Reza Khan (later known
as Reza Shah Pahlavi, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty), assumed
leadership of the Persian Cossacks Brigade in November 1918, after
the expulsion of its Russian commanders. In February 1921, Reza
Khan and Sayyid Zia ad Din Tabatabai, a powerful civilian
conspirator, entered Tehran at the head of 1,500 to 2,500 Persian
Cossacks and overthrew the Qajar regime. Within a week, Tabatabai
formed a new government and made Reza Khan the army chief.
Recognizing the importance of a strong and unified army for the
modern state, Reza Khan rapidly dissolved all "independent"
military units and prepared to create a single national army for
the first time in Iranian history.
Riding on a strong nationalist wave, Reza Khan was determined
to create an indigenous officer corps for the new army, though an
exception was made for a few Swedish officers serving in the
Gendarmerie. Within a matter of months, officers drawn from the
Persian Cossacks represented the majority. Nevertheless, Reza Khan
recognized the need for Western military expertise and sent Iranian
officers to European military academies, particularly St. Cyr in
France, to acquire modern technical know-how. In doing so, he hoped
the Iranian army would increase its professionalism without
jeopardizing the country's still fragile social, political, and
religious balance.
By 1925 the army had grown to a force of 40,000 troops, and
Reza Khan, under the provisions of martial law, had gradually
assumed control of the central government. His most significant
political accomplishment came in 1925 when the parliament, or
Majlis (see Glossary),
enacted a universal military conscription
law. In December 1925, Reza Khan became the commander in chief of
the army; with the assistance of the Majlis, he assumed the title
of His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah Pahlavi
(see The Era of Reza Shah, 1921-41
, ch. 1).
Reza Khan created the Iranian army, and the army made him shah.
Under the shah, the powerful army was used not only against
rebellious tribes but also against anti-Pahlavi demonstrations.
Ostensibly created to defend the country from foreign aggression,
the army became the enforcer of Reza Shah's internal security
policies. The need for such a military arm of the central
government was quite evident to Reza Shah, who allocated anywhere
from 30 to 50 percent of total yearly national expenditures to the
army. Not only did he purchase modern weapons in large quantities,
but, in 1924 and 1927, respectively, he created an air force and a
navy as branches of the army, an arrangement unchanged until 1955.
With the introduction of these new services, the army established
two military academies to meet the ever-rising demand for officers.
The majority of the officers continued to be trained in Europe,
however, and upon their return served either in the army or in key
government posts in Tehran and the provinces. By 1941 the army had
gained a privileged role in society. Loyal officers and troops were
well paid and received numerous perquisites, making them Iran's
third wealthiest class, after the shah's entourage and the powerful
merchant and landowning families. Disloyalty to the shah, evidenced
by several coup attempts, was punished harshly.
By 1941 the army stood at 125,000 troops--five times its
original size--and was considered well trained and well equipped.
Yet, when the army faced its first challenge, the shah was sorely
disappointed; the Iranian army failed to repulse invading British
and Soviet forces. London and Moscow had insisted that the shah
expel Iran's large German population and allow shipments of war
supplies to cross the country en route to the Soviet Union. Both of
these conditions proved unacceptable to Reza Shah; he was
sympathetic to Germany, and Iran had declared its neutrality in
World War II. Iran's location was so strategically important to the
Allied war effort, however, that London and Moscow chose to
overlook Tehran's claim of neutrality. Against the Allied forces,
the Iranian army was decimated in three short days, the fledgling
air force and navy were totally destroyed, and conscripts deserted
by the thousands. His institutional power base ruined, Reza Shah
abdicated in favor of his young son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
In the absence of a broad political power base and with a
shattered army, Mohammad Reza Shah faced an almost impossible task
of rebuilding. There was no popular sympathy for the army in view
of the widespread and largely accurate perception that it was a
brutal tool used to uphold a dictatorial regime. The young shah,
distancing Tehran from the European military, in 1942 invited the
United States to send a military mission to advise in the
reorganization effort. With American advice, emphasis was placed on
quality rather than quantity; the small but more confident army was
capable enough to participate in the 1946 campaign in Azarbaijan to
put down a Soviet-inspired separatist rebellion
(see World War II and the Azarbaijan Crisis
, ch. 1).
Unlike its 1925 counterpart, the 1946 Majlis was suspicious of
the shah's plans for a strong army. Many members of the parliament
feared that the army would once again be used as a source of
political power. To curtail the shah's potential domination of the
country, they limited his military budgets.
Although determined to build an effective military
establishment, the shah was forced to accept the ever-rising
managerial control of the Majlis. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq,
backed by strong Majlis support, demanded and received the
portfolio of minister of war in 1952. For the better part of a
year, Mossadeq introduced changes in the high command, dismissing
officers loyal to the shah and replacing them with pro-Mossadeq
nationalists. With the assistance of British and United States
intelligence, however, officers dismissed by Mossadeq staged the
August 1953 coup d'état, which overthrew the prime minister and
returned the shah to power
(see Mossadeq and Oil Nationalization
, ch. 1).
In a classic housecleaning, several hundred pro-Mossadeq
officers were arrested, allegedly for membership in the communist
Tudeh Party. Approximately two dozen were executed, largely to set
an example and to demonstrate to the public that the shah was
firmly in command. Within two years, the shah had consolidated his
rule over the armed forces, as well as over the much-weakened
Majlis. Separate commands were established for the army, air force,
and navy; and all three branches of the military embarked on
massive modernization programs, which flourished throughout the
1960s and 1970s.
Nonetheless, the shah's military was probably crippled as early
as 1955. Mohammad Reza Shah, mistrustful of his subordinates as
well as his close advisers, instituted an unparalleled system of
control over all his officers. Not only did the monarch make all
decisions pertaining to purchasing, promotions, and routine
military affairs, but he also permitted little interaction among
junior and senior officers. Even less was tolerated among senior
officers. No meetings grouping all his top officers in the same
room were ever held. Rather, the shah favored individual
"audiences" with each service chief; he then delegated assignments
and duties according to his overall plans. This approach proved
effective for the shah, at least until his downfall in 1979. For
the Iranian armed forces, it proved devastating.
As internal security agencies assumed the critical role of
maintaining public order, the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces (IIAF)
were charged with defending the country against foreign aggression.
First among threats was the Soviet Union, which shares a
2,000-kilometer border with Iran. The shah feared that Moscow would
try to gain access to warm-water port facilities, a Russian goal
since Peter the Great, and seek to destabilize what the Soviets
surely perceived to be a pro-Western, if not pro-American, regime.
The majority of Iranian troops, therefore, were stationed in the
north for the better part of the early 1960s. The resulting high
level of tension between two mismatched neighboring forces was not
a satisfactory arrangement for the politically and militarily
astute monarch. Taking a pragmatic approach, the shah pursued
economic cooperation to improve relations with the Soviet Union and
thereby reduced military tensions along the border. Having softened
Iran's Cold War rhetoric in relation to Moscow, the shah focused
his attention on the Persian Gulf. When in 1971 Britain terminated
its treaties of protection with the several small Arab shaykhdoms
or amirates of the Arabian Peninsula, the shah's primary security
concerns shifted to the border with Iraq.
When petroleum exports from the Gulf expanded rapidly in the
1970s and British withdrawal from the conservative shaykhdoms
created a security vacuum, the Iranian military expanded its plans
to include the defense of sea-lanes, especially the Strait of
Hormuz, although navigation through the strait generally takes
place entirely in Oman's territorial waters. Iran has always
considered the forty-one-kilometer-wide strait vital to its oil
exports and, since 1968, has made every effort to exert as much
influence as possible there. The shah referred to the strait as
Iran's "jugular vein," and the revolutionary regime has been
similarly concerned with its security
(see
fig. 10).
In March 1975, Iran reached a geographic-political agreement
with Iraq. This pact, called the Algiers Agreement, accomplished
two important military objectives. First, because the existence of
the agreement allowed Iran to terminate aid to the Kurdish rebels
in Iraq, Iran could deploy more of its forces in areas other than
the Iraqi border. Second, Baghdad's acceptance of Iran's boundary
claim to a thalweg (the middle of the main navigable channel) in
the Shatt al Arab settled a security issue, freeing the Iranian
navy to shift its major facilities from Khorramshahr on the Iraqi
border to Bandar Abbas near the strait and to upgrade its naval
forces in the southern part of the Gulf.
Despite frequent public expressions of reserve, the weaker
conservative Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf supported the
shah's military mission of guaranteeing freedom of navigation in
and through the Gulf. They strongly objected, however, to Iran's
military occupation in November 1971 of the islands of Abu Musa,
belonging to Sharjah, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, belonging
to Ras al Khaymah. These two members of the United Arab Emirates
could offer no resistance to Tehran's swift military action,
however. The Iranian navy used its Hovercraft to transport
occupying troops, and it eventually installed military facilities
on two of the islands. Despite its earlier agreement to respect
Sharjah's claim to Abu Musa, Tehran justified the occupation of Abu
Musa and the Tunbs on strategic grounds. Located near the strait
between the deepest navigation lanes, the islands offered ideal
bases from which to watch over shipping in the Gulf.
This action was only the precursor of other regional operations
by which a strong Iranian military would deter foreign, especially
Soviet or Soviet-inspired, incursions into the Gulf. Twice, during
the 1970s, the shah provided military assistance--to Oman and
Pakistan--to overcome internal rebellions. By doing so, he
established Iran as the dominant regional military power.
The most significant combat operation involving Iranian (along
with British and Jordanian) troops took place in Oman's Dhofar
Province. Iran aided Sultan Qabus in fighting the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Oman, which was supported by the People's
Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) and the Soviet Union.
Starting with an initial force of 300 in late 1972, the Iranian
contingent grew in strength to 3,000 before its withdrawal in
January 1977. The shah was proud that his forces had participated
in the defeat of the guerrilla rebellion, even though the
performance of Iranian troops in Oman was mixed. The air force
received the most favorable reports from the battle zone.
Reconnaissance flights provided valuable information, and
helicopters proved effective in the rugged Dhofar region. Ground
forces fared less well, suffering significant casualties, with 210
Iranian soldiers killed in 1976 alone. The high casualty rate was
attributed to the overall lack of combat experience. Nearly 15,000
Iranian soldiers were rotated through Oman during the five-year
period.
In 1976 Iranian counterinsurgency forces, relying on helicopter
support, were deployed in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province to combat
another separatist rebellion. This operation, albeit small and
limited, was of considerable concern to Iran, which had a large
Baluch population of its own. The shah sought to buy insurance
against a possible insurrection in Iran by helping Pakistan crush
a Baluch uprising.
The shah continued to assist his allies in Oman and Pakistan
after 1977. More important, Iran had served notice that it would
engage its military to preserve the status quo in the Persian Gulf
region, a status quo that was heavily tilted to its advantage. On
more than one occasion, the shah stated that he would not refrain
from maintaining the security of the Gulf, whether or not his
troops were invited to intervene.
Iran had also come of age in the larger context of the Middle
East. Between 1958 and 1978 Iran participated in war games
conducted under the auspices of the Central Treaty Organization
(CENTO), which grouped Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Britain (with
the United States participating as an observer). Although CENTO
declined in significance over the years, its military exercises,
especially the yearly Midlink maritime maneuvers, provided useful
training for the Iranian armed forces. The shah also participated
in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions, sending a battalion
to the UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights as part of the United
Nations Disengagement Observer Force in 1977. The bulk of this
force also served in southern Lebanon following the Israeli
invasion of 1978. The Iranian contingent in the United Nations
Interim Force in Lebanon was withdrawn in late 1978, however,
following several desertions by Shia Muslim soldiers sympathetic to
the local population.
On January 16, 1979, as the shah was preparing to leave Iran
for the last time, he was still confident that his army could and
would handle any internal disturbances. Still under the impression
that the Soviet Union and Iraq were the greatest threats to his
country, he left behind a United States-designed army prepared for
external rather than domestic requirements.
Data as of December 1987
Historical Background
Figure 10. Strait of Hormuz and Vicinity
The importance of the armed forces in Iran flows from Iran's
long history of successive military empires. For over 2,500 years,
starting with the conquests of the Achaemenid rulers of the sixth
century B.C., Iran developed a strong military tradition. Drawing
on a vast manpower pool in western Asia, the Achaemenid rulers
raised an army of 360,000, from which they could send expeditions
to Europe and Africa.
Iranian early military history boasts the epic performances of
such great leaders as Cyrus the Great and Darius I. The last great
Iranian military ruler was Nader Shah, whose army defeated the
Mughals of India in 1739. Since then, however, nearly all efforts
to conquer more territory or check encroaching empires have failed.
During much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Iran
was divided and occupied by British and Russian military forces.
When their interests coincided in 1907, London and St. Petersburg
entered into the Anglo-Russian Agreement, which formally divided
Iran into two spheres of influence. During World War I, the weak
and ineffective Qajar Dynasty, allegedly hindered by the effects of
the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907, could not prevent
increasing British and Russian military interventions, despite
Iran's declaration of neutrality
(see World War I
, ch. 1).
In 1918 the Qajar armed forces consisted of four separate
foreign-commanded military units. Several provincial and tribal
forces could also be called on during an emergency, but their
reliability was highly questionable. More often than not,
provincial and tribal forces opposed the government's
centralization efforts, particularly because Tehran was perceived
to be under the dictate of foreign powers. Having foreign officers
in commanding positions over Iranian troops added to these tribal
and religious concerns. Loyal, disciplined, and well trained, the
most effective government unit was the 8,000-man Persian Cossacks
Brigade. Created in 1879 and commanded by Russian officers until
the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, after which its command passed into
Iranian hands, the brigade represented the core of the new Iranian
armed forces. Swedish officers commanded the 8,400-man Gendarmerie
(later the Imperial Gendarmerie and after 1979 the Islamic Iranian
Gendarmerie), organized in 1911 as the first internal security
force. The 6,000-man South Persia Rifles unit was financed by
Britain and commanded by British officers from its inception in
1916. Its primary task was to combat tribal forces allegedly
stirred up by German agents during World War I. The Qajar palace
guard, the Nizam, commanded by a Swedish officer, was a force
originally consisting of 2,000 men, although it deteriorated
rapidly in numbers because of rivalries. Thus, during World War I
the 24,400 troops in these four separate military units made up one
of the weakest forces in Iranian history.
Upon signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and
Turkey on December 15, 1917, Russia put in motion its eventual
withdrawal from Iran, preparing the way for an indigenous Iranian
military. A hitherto little-known colonel, Reza Khan (later known
as Reza Shah Pahlavi, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty), assumed
leadership of the Persian Cossacks Brigade in November 1918, after
the expulsion of its Russian commanders. In February 1921, Reza
Khan and Sayyid Zia ad Din Tabatabai, a powerful civilian
conspirator, entered Tehran at the head of 1,500 to 2,500 Persian
Cossacks and overthrew the Qajar regime. Within a week, Tabatabai
formed a new government and made Reza Khan the army chief.
Recognizing the importance of a strong and unified army for the
modern state, Reza Khan rapidly dissolved all "independent"
military units and prepared to create a single national army for
the first time in Iranian history.
Riding on a strong nationalist wave, Reza Khan was determined
to create an indigenous officer corps for the new army, though an
exception was made for a few Swedish officers serving in the
Gendarmerie. Within a matter of months, officers drawn from the
Persian Cossacks represented the majority. Nevertheless, Reza Khan
recognized the need for Western military expertise and sent Iranian
officers to European military academies, particularly St. Cyr in
France, to acquire modern technical know-how. In doing so, he hoped
the Iranian army would increase its professionalism without
jeopardizing the country's still fragile social, political, and
religious balance.
By 1925 the army had grown to a force of 40,000 troops, and
Reza Khan, under the provisions of martial law, had gradually
assumed control of the central government. His most significant
political accomplishment came in 1925 when the parliament, or
Majlis (see Glossary),
enacted a universal military conscription
law. In December 1925, Reza Khan became the commander in chief of
the army; with the assistance of the Majlis, he assumed the title
of His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah Pahlavi
(see The Era of Reza Shah, 1921-41
, ch. 1).
Reza Khan created the Iranian army, and the army made him shah.
Under the shah, the powerful army was used not only against
rebellious tribes but also against anti-Pahlavi demonstrations.
Ostensibly created to defend the country from foreign aggression,
the army became the enforcer of Reza Shah's internal security
policies. The need for such a military arm of the central
government was quite evident to Reza Shah, who allocated anywhere
from 30 to 50 percent of total yearly national expenditures to the
army. Not only did he purchase modern weapons in large quantities,
but, in 1924 and 1927, respectively, he created an air force and a
navy as branches of the army, an arrangement unchanged until 1955.
With the introduction of these new services, the army established
two military academies to meet the ever-rising demand for officers.
The majority of the officers continued to be trained in Europe,
however, and upon their return served either in the army or in key
government posts in Tehran and the provinces. By 1941 the army had
gained a privileged role in society. Loyal officers and troops were
well paid and received numerous perquisites, making them Iran's
third wealthiest class, after the shah's entourage and the powerful
merchant and landowning families. Disloyalty to the shah, evidenced
by several coup attempts, was punished harshly.
By 1941 the army stood at 125,000 troops--five times its
original size--and was considered well trained and well equipped.
Yet, when the army faced its first challenge, the shah was sorely
disappointed; the Iranian army failed to repulse invading British
and Soviet forces. London and Moscow had insisted that the shah
expel Iran's large German population and allow shipments of war
supplies to cross the country en route to the Soviet Union. Both of
these conditions proved unacceptable to Reza Shah; he was
sympathetic to Germany, and Iran had declared its neutrality in
World War II. Iran's location was so strategically important to the
Allied war effort, however, that London and Moscow chose to
overlook Tehran's claim of neutrality. Against the Allied forces,
the Iranian army was decimated in three short days, the fledgling
air force and navy were totally destroyed, and conscripts deserted
by the thousands. His institutional power base ruined, Reza Shah
abdicated in favor of his young son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
In the absence of a broad political power base and with a
shattered army, Mohammad Reza Shah faced an almost impossible task
of rebuilding. There was no popular sympathy for the army in view
of the widespread and largely accurate perception that it was a
brutal tool used to uphold a dictatorial regime. The young shah,
distancing Tehran from the European military, in 1942 invited the
United States to send a military mission to advise in the
reorganization effort. With American advice, emphasis was placed on
quality rather than quantity; the small but more confident army was
capable enough to participate in the 1946 campaign in Azarbaijan to
put down a Soviet-inspired separatist rebellion
(see World War II and the Azarbaijan Crisis
, ch. 1).
Unlike its 1925 counterpart, the 1946 Majlis was suspicious of
the shah's plans for a strong army. Many members of the parliament
feared that the army would once again be used as a source of
political power. To curtail the shah's potential domination of the
country, they limited his military budgets.
Although determined to build an effective military
establishment, the shah was forced to accept the ever-rising
managerial control of the Majlis. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq,
backed by strong Majlis support, demanded and received the
portfolio of minister of war in 1952. For the better part of a
year, Mossadeq introduced changes in the high command, dismissing
officers loyal to the shah and replacing them with pro-Mossadeq
nationalists. With the assistance of British and United States
intelligence, however, officers dismissed by Mossadeq staged the
August 1953 coup d'état, which overthrew the prime minister and
returned the shah to power
(see Mossadeq and Oil Nationalization
, ch. 1).
In a classic housecleaning, several hundred pro-Mossadeq
officers were arrested, allegedly for membership in the communist
Tudeh Party. Approximately two dozen were executed, largely to set
an example and to demonstrate to the public that the shah was
firmly in command. Within two years, the shah had consolidated his
rule over the armed forces, as well as over the much-weakened
Majlis. Separate commands were established for the army, air force,
and navy; and all three branches of the military embarked on
massive modernization programs, which flourished throughout the
1960s and 1970s.
Nonetheless, the shah's military was probably crippled as early
as 1955. Mohammad Reza Shah, mistrustful of his subordinates as
well as his close advisers, instituted an unparalleled system of
control over all his officers. Not only did the monarch make all
decisions pertaining to purchasing, promotions, and routine
military affairs, but he also permitted little interaction among
junior and senior officers. Even less was tolerated among senior
officers. No meetings grouping all his top officers in the same
room were ever held. Rather, the shah favored individual
"audiences" with each service chief; he then delegated assignments
and duties according to his overall plans. This approach proved
effective for the shah, at least until his downfall in 1979. For
the Iranian armed forces, it proved devastating.
As internal security agencies assumed the critical role of
maintaining public order, the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces (IIAF)
were charged with defending the country against foreign aggression.
First among threats was the Soviet Union, which shares a
2,000-kilometer border with Iran. The shah feared that Moscow would
try to gain access to warm-water port facilities, a Russian goal
since Peter the Great, and seek to destabilize what the Soviets
surely perceived to be a pro-Western, if not pro-American, regime.
The majority of Iranian troops, therefore, were stationed in the
north for the better part of the early 1960s. The resulting high
level of tension between two mismatched neighboring forces was not
a satisfactory arrangement for the politically and militarily
astute monarch. Taking a pragmatic approach, the shah pursued
economic cooperation to improve relations with the Soviet Union and
thereby reduced military tensions along the border. Having softened
Iran's Cold War rhetoric in relation to Moscow, the shah focused
his attention on the Persian Gulf. When in 1971 Britain terminated
its treaties of protection with the several small Arab shaykhdoms
or amirates of the Arabian Peninsula, the shah's primary security
concerns shifted to the border with Iraq.
When petroleum exports from the Gulf expanded rapidly in the
1970s and British withdrawal from the conservative shaykhdoms
created a security vacuum, the Iranian military expanded its plans
to include the defense of sea-lanes, especially the Strait of
Hormuz, although navigation through the strait generally takes
place entirely in Oman's territorial waters. Iran has always
considered the forty-one-kilometer-wide strait vital to its oil
exports and, since 1968, has made every effort to exert as much
influence as possible there. The shah referred to the strait as
Iran's "jugular vein," and the revolutionary regime has been
similarly concerned with its security
(see
fig. 10).
In March 1975, Iran reached a geographic-political agreement
with Iraq. This pact, called the Algiers Agreement, accomplished
two important military objectives. First, because the existence of
the agreement allowed Iran to terminate aid to the Kurdish rebels
in Iraq, Iran could deploy more of its forces in areas other than
the Iraqi border. Second, Baghdad's acceptance of Iran's boundary
claim to a thalweg (the middle of the main navigable channel) in
the Shatt al Arab settled a security issue, freeing the Iranian
navy to shift its major facilities from Khorramshahr on the Iraqi
border to Bandar Abbas near the strait and to upgrade its naval
forces in the southern part of the Gulf.
Despite frequent public expressions of reserve, the weaker
conservative Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf supported the
shah's military mission of guaranteeing freedom of navigation in
and through the Gulf. They strongly objected, however, to Iran's
military occupation in November 1971 of the islands of Abu Musa,
belonging to Sharjah, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, belonging
to Ras al Khaymah. These two members of the United Arab Emirates
could offer no resistance to Tehran's swift military action,
however. The Iranian navy used its Hovercraft to transport
occupying troops, and it eventually installed military facilities
on two of the islands. Despite its earlier agreement to respect
Sharjah's claim to Abu Musa, Tehran justified the occupation of Abu
Musa and the Tunbs on strategic grounds. Located near the strait
between the deepest navigation lanes, the islands offered ideal
bases from which to watch over shipping in the Gulf.
This action was only the precursor of other regional operations
by which a strong Iranian military would deter foreign, especially
Soviet or Soviet-inspired, incursions into the Gulf. Twice, during
the 1970s, the shah provided military assistance--to Oman and
Pakistan--to overcome internal rebellions. By doing so, he
established Iran as the dominant regional military power.
The most significant combat operation involving Iranian (along
with British and Jordanian) troops took place in Oman's Dhofar
Province. Iran aided Sultan Qabus in fighting the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Oman, which was supported by the People's
Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) and the Soviet Union.
Starting with an initial force of 300 in late 1972, the Iranian
contingent grew in strength to 3,000 before its withdrawal in
January 1977. The shah was proud that his forces had participated
in the defeat of the guerrilla rebellion, even though the
performance of Iranian troops in Oman was mixed. The air force
received the most favorable reports from the battle zone.
Reconnaissance flights provided valuable information, and
helicopters proved effective in the rugged Dhofar region. Ground
forces fared less well, suffering significant casualties, with 210
Iranian soldiers killed in 1976 alone. The high casualty rate was
attributed to the overall lack of combat experience. Nearly 15,000
Iranian soldiers were rotated through Oman during the five-year
period.
In 1976 Iranian counterinsurgency forces, relying on helicopter
support, were deployed in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province to combat
another separatist rebellion. This operation, albeit small and
limited, was of considerable concern to Iran, which had a large
Baluch population of its own. The shah sought to buy insurance
against a possible insurrection in Iran by helping Pakistan crush
a Baluch uprising.
The shah continued to assist his allies in Oman and Pakistan
after 1977. More important, Iran had served notice that it would
engage its military to preserve the status quo in the Persian Gulf
region, a status quo that was heavily tilted to its advantage. On
more than one occasion, the shah stated that he would not refrain
from maintaining the security of the Gulf, whether or not his
troops were invited to intervene.
Iran had also come of age in the larger context of the Middle
East. Between 1958 and 1978 Iran participated in war games
conducted under the auspices of the Central Treaty Organization
(CENTO), which grouped Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Britain (with
the United States participating as an observer). Although CENTO
declined in significance over the years, its military exercises,
especially the yearly Midlink maritime maneuvers, provided useful
training for the Iranian armed forces. The shah also participated
in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions, sending a battalion
to the UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights as part of the United
Nations Disengagement Observer Force in 1977. The bulk of this
force also served in southern Lebanon following the Israeli
invasion of 1978. The Iranian contingent in the United Nations
Interim Force in Lebanon was withdrawn in late 1978, however,
following several desertions by Shia Muslim soldiers sympathetic to
the local population.
On January 16, 1979, as the shah was preparing to leave Iran
for the last time, he was still confident that his army could and
would handle any internal disturbances. Still under the impression
that the Soviet Union and Iraq were the greatest threats to his
country, he left behind a United States-designed army prepared for
external rather than domestic requirements.
Data as of December 1987
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