Iran Claims It Will Be ‘One of World’s Largest Arms Exporters’

Iran’s Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri has claimed that once the U.S. lifts its sanctions, Iran is poised to become one of the world’s largest arms exporters.

The claim, which is an example of Iran’s whistling in the dark, is reported on here: “Iran chief of staff: We’ll be one of the world’s largest arms exporters,” Jerusalem Post, February 7, 2022:

Iran will be one of the world’s largest arms exporters if US sanctions are lifted, claimed Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Mohammad Bagheri during a ceremony on Monday, according to the Iranian Young Journalists Club.

“In the field of self-reliance, self-confidence and self-sufficiency, we are more than self-sufficient in weapons and equipment, in designing strategies and policies, in operational plans and tactics, and in what we must do in the defense and security of the country,” said Bagheri.

Iran’s military has not exactly proven itself impervious to attacks, both physical and cyber. Israel has repeatedly upended its nuclear program. The Stuxnet malware in 2010 set back that program for one to two years, by introducing a computer worm that caused more than 1,000 centrifuges to speed up so fast that they destroyed themselves. From 2010 to 2012, Israel managed to assassinate four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. In 2018, the Mossad was able to locate and to seize from a warehouse in the middle of Tehran Iran’s entire nuclear archive, and bring it back to Israel. The archive provided conclusive evidence of Iran’s violation of its commitments under the JCPOA deal, and of how it managed repeatedly to foil the IAEA inspectors. Mossad then managed to attack, and very largely destroy, the nuclear facility at Natanz, and then to destroy a second facility built some fifty meters underground at the same site. In addition Mossad has been responsible for other attacks all over Iran, hitting petrochemical plants, electricity power plants, and other critical components of Iran’s superstructure. Does Bagheri think that Iran’s conventional weapons plants won’t be reached either by Mossad on the ground or in the long arm of the Israeli Air Force?

Bagheri stressed that Iran does need to import equipment from other countries, adding that “if the criminal US sanctions are lifted we will become one of the world’s largest arms exporters.”

In 2020, then Iranian defense minister Amir Hatami stated that Iran continued arms cooperation with some countries even while sanctions were imposed against arms trade with Iran. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has reached good positions in the field of arms exports to some countries during this period and agreements have been concluded in this field,” said Hatami at the time.

Iran has not been selling arms, but giving them to, inter alia: the Houthis in Yemen for use in the civil war; Kata’ib Hezbollah, a Shi’a militia in Iraq; the Syrian army; and to Hezbollah, which has 140,000 rockets and missiles received, gratis, from Iran.

There is no possibility that any of these recipients of Iranian conventional arms will be in a position to buy them from Iran. The Houthis have no money to start paying for Iranian arms that up to now have been given to them. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. The Houthis are fighting the forces of the national government; these are supported by the deep-pocketed Saudis, who provide weapons unstintingly. It’s hard to imagine how the Houthis could ever begin to pay for Iranian weapons; Tehran will have to keep supplying them for free.

The same is true of Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Shi’a militia in southern Iraq that is closest to Iran. It has been supplied with weapons from Tehran, but is not now, and will not be, in a position to buy them. Like the Houthis, they are dependent on Iran giving, not selling them, weapons.

In Syria, the government may have won its civil war, but much of the country lies in ruin. The cost to reconstruct it, that is to put it back in the condition it was in in 2011, just before the civil war began, will cost at least $400 billion. Though victorious in its war, the Syrian government is in no position to buy weapons from Iran. Nor is Syria likely to continue to be an ally of Iran. Bashar Assad realizes that he needs enormous infusions of reconstruction money; such sums can only come from the Gulf Arab states, who will supply funds to Assad only if he cuts Syria’s ties to Iran.

Finally, there is Hezbollah in Lebanon. But Lebanon – and therefore Hezbollah – is impoverished; its economy lies in ruins; 60% of Lebanese now live below the poverty line; the Lebanese currency has lost 90% of its value in the last two years. Hezbollah is suffering economically just like the rest of Lebanon. The 140,000 rockets and missiles sent to Hezbollah by Iran were a gift. Hezbollah has no funds to start paying for Iranian arms; it has even had to slash the salaries of its fighters.

If Yemen’s Houthis,, Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah, Syria’s army, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah all lack the wherewithal to buy Iranian arms, where else can Iran find buyers for its weapons? Not from any of the Arab states, that are among the world’s largest buyers of arms, but who want nothing to do with Iran. Has Mohammad Bagheri forgotten that? Possibly Qatar, which has maintained good relations with Iran, might become a customer, but on the other hand, Qatar is now trying to get back in the good graces of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. If Qatar were to buy arms from Iran, that would enrage all of its neighbors, and throw a spanner in the works of a potential reconciliation between Qatar and those Gulf states. Why would Qatar want to endanger its relations with its fellow Arabs, now that they seem willing to welcome it back in the fold?

What about Iran exporting arms to Europe? European nations would not buy Iranian arms for three reasons: First, those weapons are no match for the weaponry produced by the Americans, the French, the Germans, the British, or the Israelis. Second, any country that buys weapons from Iran will enrage Washington, which even if it lifts sanctions on Iran still remains an enemy of the Islamic Republic. Washington’s reaction is not something would-be customers for Iranian weapons can ignore.

The UN arms embargo on Iran ended in 2020, although US sanctions on arms sales are still in place. After the embargo ended Hatami claimed that Iran’s export of weapons will exceed its purchases.

Iran is known to smuggle weapons to its proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. It is unclear if these are the exports referred to by Iranian officials.

If Mohammad Bagheri is counting on sales of weapons to the current recipients of Iranian weapons, given for free, he has another think coming. None of these – from the Houthis to Hezbollah — are going to be able to pay for weapons for many years to come.

One possible market for Iranian weapons are the five “stans” of Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. But there are several problems. First, there would be Russian opposition to such sales; Russia has been until now the sole supplier of weapons to the “stans” and would oppose any attempt by Iran to take away customers for Russian arms. Second, of the five stans, only one – Kazakhstan – has, because of its oil, sufficient resources to be a steady buyer of arms. Third, Turkey sees the “stans” as fellow Turkic states, and the pan-Turanian impulse to strengthen ties between Turkey and the “stans” might encourage arms sales to them from Turkey at concessionary prices, in order to strengthen the military and political links between Ankara and the Turkic “stans,” and to shut out Iran as an arms seller to the region.

Sub-Saharan Africa, too, lacks the money to make major weapons purchases. There is only one country in Sub-Saharan Africa that has been buying some arms from Iran. That is Ethiopia, which had been buying American arms, but was cut off from that source by Washington, which disapproved of how Addis Ababa was conducting its war in the Tigray region. But Ethiopia, too, is a poor country; various news outlets have noted that Ethiopia reportedly acquired several Mohajer-6 drones from Iran. “Several drones” is not exactly a significant purchase of the kind General Mohammad Bagheri has in mind.

One country that might buy Iranian weapons is Iraq. Iran had already been selling Baghdad weapons before the 2015 deal . But the amounts have been small: $10 million worth in 2014. And there is another problem: would Iraq, which is trying to be in the good graces of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, want to harm those relations by buying arms from their mortal enemy, Iran?

Far from being a “major arms exporter,” as Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri claims, Iran will find very few customers for its weapons, and those few – like Ethiopia and Iraq – don’t have the money to make major weapons purchases.

Meanwhile, Israeli arms exports represented 3% of global arms exports between 2016 and 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In 2018-2019, Israel was ranked 9th in SIPRI’s list of top arms exporters. In 20-19-2020, it was ranked 8th; in 2020-2021, it was ranked 7th.

In 2021, when Israel was ranked seventh in the list of arms exporters, it was just behind major powers — the U.S., Russia, China, France, Germany, and the UK. The Jewish state, in arms exports as in so much else, punches far above its weight.

In the MENA region, there are many arms purchasers, but only one major exporter of weapons That is not Iran, which is not now and never will be “a major arms exporter,” but little Israel, that convincingly demonstrates to the world – by using them on the battlefield, as in last May’s war with Hamas in Gaza – what its weapons, offensive and defensive, can do. These include its advanced military drones and the Iron Dome anti-missile batteries that intercepted 90% of incoming missiles from Gaza. Also to be operational within months is Israel’s newly-developed laser-based missile defense system, both effective and inexpensive to manufacture. Much of the weaponry that Israel produces is as advanced as that manufactured in the U.S. Meanwhile, let Iran’s Chief of Staff, Mohammad Bagheri give free rein to his vivid oriental imagination, as he contemplates Iran becoming “one of the world’s largest arms exporters.” It’s a fantasy that the ghost of Sheherazade could not have bettered.

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