History, Politics And Current Affairs

One can safely assume that Iran discarded all of its Soviet equipment in favor of the older Western equipment?

Whats the state of the Iranian Army?

Iranian Air Force?

Lastly, Iranian Navy?

You mentioned Chieftain Tanks, M60 Tanks, and I think M113s.

F-14s and F-4s were mentioned definitely.

As were an Iranian Frigate.

Jan mentioned parts for Chieftains, and even some complete tanks being sent, along with technical personnel to assist in getting the stuff back to fully operational status. Ditto for the Iranian AF: lots of people with American accents helping the Iranians with F-4, F-5, and F-14 maintenance and getting airframes back to full capacity. Same thing for their M-60s and M-113: don't be surprised if some additional tanks and APCs were sent over, along with parts for their AH-1 and Bell 214 fleet.

As for the Iranian Navy, I'd bet their Kilo-class SSKs were sent to the U.S. and Britain for detailed study, and their remaining frigates wound up in Western shipyards (not the U.S. or the UK, but, say Italy or France) for systems upgrades and a very through overhaul via an extensive yard period. Any U.S. or British systems can be shipped to the yard quietly and without fuss (unless some nosy reporter sticks their nose into the affair).

With the I-HAWK out of U.S. service (Army, still in USMC reserve in TLW), missiles, spare parts, and possibly some complete batteries might also be available.

Per Chapter 86, the I-HAWK is still used by some Army National Guard ADA units.

Oops. My mistake.

Norway withdrew it's NOAH (Norwegian Adapted Hawk) in 1995-98, historically - this was based on I-Hawk, but with some software and hardware changes. It might be available for supplying the Iranians, though quantity would be low. There was a description of NOAH in the 1988 September-October edition of Air Defence Artillery Bulletin, but the link to the online archive is broken for the time being. The magazine appears to have been merged with other magazines to form Fires Bulletin in 2007, and a link to the archives of the previous magazines can be seen here, but most of the links are broken, and the one that is not, for Field Artillery Bulletin's archive, leads to an archive of database errors.

The Iranians are beginning to fall back on their Western supplied equipment as the Soviet equipment is getting harder to support. However don't think that they've abandoned it, in @ the Iranians have been very innovative in keeping their remaining Western supplied equipment like the F-4 and F-14 in service, even if it is in declining numbers and they have even produced their own equipment based on reverse engineering American aircraft.

The Iranians are in quite a good position in that they own lots of fairly modern Soviet aircraft and other equipment. For example in return for Tomcat and Phantom spares, and suitable weapons, Iran could supply America with Mig-29s and Su-24s. The Kilos would be a godsend to NATO's ASW forces, I'm sure we'd offer to buy them, or supply lots of spare parts, weapons reloads and expert personnel in return for one of two boats.

Interestingly with regards to weapons now that the USAF and USN has equipped its aircraft with the AIM-120 and AIM-9X there will no doubt still be AIM-7s and older model AIM-9s in the inventory that are not life expired and would be available for export (of course the Americans would still want to hold onto a reserve just in case the missile manufacturers were not able to keep up with demand in a war). Similarly now that the F-14D fleet is using the AIM-54D (and soon the AIM-155) AIM-54C missiles can potentially be supplied to Iran for its Tomcats.

The Iranians do have a T-72 production facility: even though most of the tanks were kit assembled. Not to mention that they've produced a BMP-1 clone. And spares might come from India for both if necessary. (they also built T-72s and BMPs under license)

Truly then Iran would be a forced to be reckoned with. Allah help Saddam.

In @ both Iran and Iraq demonstrated that the kit matters less than the quality of the officers and men. Neither side had any of those. They just had cannon fodder. The cannon ate well.

What's different, here?

This time, the Iranians wouldn't have the mullahs looking over the shoulders of the military. There were a lot of purges in the Iranian Armed Forces even after the Iraqi invasion. Senior officers were often promoted based on loyalty to the regime rather than competence. And resources that the regular military needed were sent to the IRGC because the mullahs were still suspicious of the regulars. With no IRGC, promotions based on ability, and resources that went to the IRGC would now either be spent on improving the economy or on upgrading the regular military. Probably a 60-40 split.

The remains of the regular Iranian Army did quite well in the Iran-Iraq war, given the constraints. Same for the AF.

Jonathan