Cordesman/Wilner, Iran & The Gulf Military Balance Rev 3
AHC 2/29/12
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Competition in Asymmetric Forces All of these same trends explain why Iran is seeking to compensate for its inability to modernize its conventional forces, the delays in its military production efforts, and the limits on its arms by building up different kinds of military forces called “asymmetric” or “irregular” forces. These efforts include a mix of weapons, and other military technologies to allow its conventional forces to try to exploit the weakness in US, allied, and Arab Gulf conventional forces. They also include steadily growing land, air, missile, and naval capabilities for its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These include small, hard to detect, elements for naval mine and missile warfare in the Gulf, training hostile and extremist elements in other countries, and steadily expanding long missile forces controlled by the IRGC that can already strike at targets anywhere in the region and are the logical delivery systems if Iran produces nuclear weapons While any use of such forces would have far less serious effects than any Iranian use of nuclear weapons, the events of the last year have shown they pose steadily growing risks. Iran has made more and more dramatic threats in response to the fact the US and EU have imposed far more serious sanction, and Iran’s actual use of such forces would be much less provocative than missile or nuclear strikes and is much more probable. This makes this area of military competition critical to the Arab Gulf states, the secure flow of world energy exports, and the stability of the global economy.
Iran’s Growing Asymmetric Forces Iran’s leaders and senior officers have provided a wide range of descriptions of the reasons for their efforts, and have made steadily more dramatic claims about their progress in building up its asymmetric forces and about the role they might place in US and Iranian military competition. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander in chief of the IRGC has made numerous statements regarding Iran’s growing emphasis on asymmetric or irregular warfare, and the role it plays in US and Iranian military competition. One such statement notes that, “Asymmetrical warfare... is [our] strategy for dealing with the considerable capabilities of the enemy. A prominent example of this kind of warfare was [the tactics employed by Hezbollah during] the Lebanon war in 2006... Since the enemy has considerable technological abilities, and since we are still at a disadvantage in comparison, despite the progress we have made in the area of equipment, [our only] way to confront [the enemy] successfully is to adopt the strategy [of asymmetric warfare] and to employ various methods of this kind." – General Mohammad Ali Jafari, Commander of the IRGC
Other Iranian leaders and officials have echoed these themes and provided more detail:
"Our method (of choice in any possible war) is asymmetric warfare since enemy's systems and military doctrine have been designed based on the classical methods of battling.” – Brigadier General Farzad Esmayeeli, Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base, August 28, 2011.
"At this stage of the war games, part of the special and professional units of the IRGC ground force successfully displayed asymmetric warfare tactics and techniques with full coordination and preparedness. He IRGC's cavalry units exercised new asymmetric warfare tactics in the initial phase of the drills today. “The armored and mechanized units of the IRGC Ground Force expanded the depth of their operation(al zone) through exercising new asymmetric warfare tactics and relying on mobile firepower, iron-shield and
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