IRAN'S DEEP STATE AND WHY IT BUILT TWO ARMIES... ON PURPOSE
IRAN BUILT TWO ARMIES... ON PURPOSE The question people keep asking (usually with the casual arrogance of a superpower) is deceptively simple: Why not just invade Iran? The question reveals more about the ignorance of the person asking than about the country being discussed. Because Iran was not built like Iraq. It was engineered like a fortress. Most countries have a single military hierarchy. Iran deliberately does not. After the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, the new leadership faced a problem that revolutionary regimes always fear: a coup from the old army. The solution was structural paranoia. Iran created two parallel militaries. One is the Artesh, the conventional national army. Its job resembles that of any traditional military: defend borders, operate tanks, manage naval fleets, and maintain air defense networks. The regular army alone includes roughly 350,000 ground troops, plus nav...