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On Tuesday January 7, Iran fired about 20 missiles at Iraqi bases where American soldiers are stationed, in response to the assassination of General Quassem Soleimani a few days earlier. Tehran says it is ready to strike again in the event of reprisals. But what forces does Iran really have?
From an offensive point of view, Iran cannot really rely on its air force or its navy which are under-equipped and whose equipment shows a certain obsolescence. However, Tehran can rest on two pillars: its missiles and the strength of the Revolutionary Guards.
Tonight, in the space of half an hour, 22 missiles (according to the Iraqi military command, 15 according to the Iranian media ) fell on two Iraqi bases, where the American soldiers are installed, in the west in Aïn al-Assad and north to Erbil.
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" The Iranian army has accumulated a stock of ballistic missiles, conventional missiles, short and medium range, for decades ", explains Pierre Razoux, director of research at the Institute of strategic research of the military school (Iserm) . And this for a simple reason: while it does not have nuclear fire, these missiles represent a conventional deterrent on a regional scale. " The Iranians cannot retaliate with their navy or their air force, but that is a force with which they are capable of carrying out strikes and retaliatory actions ," continues the researcher.
No one knows exactly how many vectors Iran has, but one thing is certain, the arsenal is important. Last night, it is possible that the missiles fired were Shahab, weapons derived from Russian scuds and built by Iran. The latest version of this vector, the Shahab 6, is a weapon capable of carrying a charge of a ton and a half of explosive, the equivalent of six GBU 12, the bombs dropped by fighter planes. But the kinetic energy being much stronger with a missile, the damage caused is also greater.
The relentless force of the Revolutionary Guards
Above all, Tehran can rely on the Guardians of the Revolution. These elite troops, a veritable parallel army, are responsible for protecting the regime on Iranian territory as well as outside, hence the intervention, in the region, of the Al-Quds force, the expeditionary corps of " Pasdarans "led by General Quassem Soleimani.
The body of Revolutionary Guards is made up of an estimated 200,000 men, but may also rely on reservists, the "Bassijis", a force reservoir of almost two million men. It is therefore considerable. As for the Shiite militias in Iraq, real back-ups for the Al-Quds force, there are several tens of thousands of men.
At the same time, there is a regular army in Iran with 300,000 soldiers (see infographic below). This makes a total of around 500,000 men deployed in an immense, densely populated country, a mountainous, compartmentalized territory. Therefore, any nation wishing to invade Iran would face extremely harsh resistance.