MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA Iranian Army Shifts from Defensive to Offensive Posture

OE Watch Commentary: The Iranian military has gone “…we have turned the Ground Forces into a mobile offensive through various strategic phases over its existence. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was, of course, a watershed event. force….” Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini distrusted both Iran’s air force because of the high proportion of royalists who populated its top ranks, as well as flag officers who had risen to power in other military branches under the shah. Only Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran suspended the wholesale purges of top brass. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) coalesced and became predominant. Through sheer attrition and a quantitative military edge, Iran was able to stalemate Iraqi forces, achieve naval victory over Iraq, and capture the strategic peninsula, all bolstering the confidence of Iranian leaders. Their decision to confront US forces directly in April 1988 and the Iranian defeat in Operation Praying Mantis, however, convinced Iranian leaders to embrace a more asymmetric approach to confront the US and other military powers. In the Persian Gulf, this meant an embrace of speed boat swarming tactics against US shipping, while Army Ground Forces Commander Kiomars Heydari. Source: Fararu.com, https://fararu.com/files/fa/news/1397/11/7/467846_264.jpg elsewhere, asymmetric tactics meant an embrace of insurgency and terrorism. Fararu.com is a website close to the IRGC. The accompanying excerpt of senior leader speeches on the occasion of the Strength-97 military exercises, however, hints that, more than 30 years after Operation Praying Mantis, a new change may be underway in Iranian strategic doctrine. If the embrace of asymmetry was the result of relative weakness, the Army Ground Forces’ embrace of more offensive doctrines and their commanders’ explicit comments highlight a belief that Iran is now strong enough to confront enemies more directly. That Admiral Sayyari, who until last year was commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Navy, also embraced such sentiment suggests a broader consensus. Driving this consensus may be recent Iranian successes in Syria—where President Bashar al-Assad increasingly appears to have won the civil war—and in Iraq, where many Iraqis and Iranians assign disproportionate credit to Iranian rather than US assistance in victories against the Islamic State. Unclear, however, is what an offensive strategy may mean in the operational environment. While Iran has recently developed tanks (see: “Iran: New Karrar Tank to be Unveiled Soon,” OE Watch, February 2017), it is unlikely that they could be used to launch a ground invasion of any neighboring states. Rather, Heydari and Sayyari’s comments may reflect a greater willingness to supplement IRGC deployments abroad with more a formal Iranian Army Ground Forces deployment. End OE Watch Commentary (Rubin)

Source: “Farmandeh-e Niru-ye Zamini Artesh: Ruyekard Tahajami dar Dastur Qarar Gerefteh Ast (Commander of the Army Ground Forces: An Offensive Approach is in Place),” Fararu.com, 27 January 2019. https://fararu.com/fa/news/388236 The commander of the Army Ground Forces said that today nothing threatens us and emphasized, “Today, we have turned the Army Ground Forces into a mobile offensive force, but we must not in the future become starry-eyed about our capabilities. We need to upgrade our power to account for the science of the day in order to maintain the accountability of our operations.” According to the Tasnim [News Agency], Admiral Habibullah Sayarri, the Coordinating Deputy of Islamic Republic of Iran Army, and Kioumars Heydari, commander of the Army Ground Forces, participated in a special news conference to discuss the achievements of the Strength-97 military exercises, and the latest steps to improve the military’s defensive capabilities. At the beginning of the program, Gen. Heydari, commander of the Army Ground Forces, said the Strength-97 military exercises were tangibly different from previous iterations. In this exercise, we unveiled two important approaches. The first approach was the unveiling of structural changes ordered by the Army Ground Forces commander-in-chief, and the second was the general strategy communicated to the entire armed forces, which was an aggressive and proactive approach to the armed forces… Heydari said that using asymmetric tactics are not a strategy but rather tactics, and we have crossed this point today. We have reached a level of deterrence that requires no unpleasant tactics and we can defend the country with a good offense.

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