World: An Army with Two Missions

And three bureaucracies with one commander in chief

Every morning the 413,000 members of Iran's armed forces recite a pledge of allegiance to Xoda, Shah, Mihan (Persian for God, Shah and Fatherland). Significantly, in this tripartite loyalty oath, King comes before country. Iran's army, navy and increasingly sophisticated air force have two missions. One is to defend a nation ringed by potential enemies. The other is to protect the person, prestige and power of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who once observed, "In this country, if the King is not the commander in chief of the armed forces, anything can happen."

As commander in chief, the Shah has created an impressive military force that one Pentagon expert sums up as "effective, still on a learning curve with some new weapons and, above all, loyal." Apart from a few army units that crossed the Persian Gulf in 1974 to help the Sultanate of Oman put down a rebellion by the Dhofor rebels, or served with United Nations peacekeeping forces, Iran's military has not been tested in combat, but it is awesomely equipped. In the past two decades, Iran has bought $36 billion in weaponry, most of it from Britain and the U.S. The total includes 2,200 tanks, 400 jet fighters, nearly 30 naval vessels, as well as air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Iran, moreover, is one of the few nations in the world to have fleet of military hover craft. Although the latest crisis forced the Shah to delay or cancel $7 billion in current purchases, about $12 billion worth of equipment is in the delivery pipeline, including 160 advanced F-16 U.S. jet fighters. (Ironically, the army had not stockpiled grenades, tear gas and other weapons to use against demonstrators and had to order emergency supplies from the U.S.)

Iranian officials insist that this imposing military machine is needed to protect the Persian Gulf and its international oil fleets, and to fight off any possible Soviet invasion of Iran, until, they hope, reinforcements from the West could arrive. The generals see the current dissent as part of a grand Communist design, linked to Russian moves on the Horn of Africa and in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, a lot of the most sophisticated equipment, including British-made Chieftain tanks and F-4 Phantoms, was deployed around the capital rather than along the Soviet border, obviously to help protect the Shah.