Iran is wrapping up two months of its most intense military exercises in decades as it tries to deter potential attacks from its archrivals Israel and the United States, security researchers tell VOA.
The Washington-based researchers also say the Iranian drills that began in late December, and were due to conclude by mid-March, have involved some weapons systems that pose a threat to the U.S. and Israel and others that expose weaknesses in Iran's deterrent capabilities.
"The pace, intensity and publicity of the exercises is unprecedented," said Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Farzin Nadimi of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said he has been studying the Islamic Republic's military for the past 20 years.
"I have never seen them conduct so many drills in such a short period of time," he said.
Iranian state media reported the start of the exercises on Dec. 28. A week later, they said the exercises, codenamed "Great Prophet 19," were part of annual "Eqtedar" ["Power"] drills that involved Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ground forces engaging in war games in western Iran from Jan. 4-9.
Several more exercises followed, including IRGC and Iranian Army air defense drills near nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow and the Arak reactor in Khondab; IRGC naval drills in the Persian Gulf; a second round of IRGC ground force drills in southwestern Iran; and an Army drill, codenamed "Zulfiqar" in reference to a double-pointed sword in Islamic tradition, in southern Iran and the waters of the Gulf of Oman and northern Indian Ocean.
On Feb. 26, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran chief Mohammad Eslami announced the start of a two-day “nuclear defense drill” involving nuclear facilities, in comments to reporters, although he did not elaborate. There have been no state media reports about the outcome of those drills, which researchers said would typically involve electronic simulations.
Iranian officials and state media have described the military exercises as having several goals, from boosting public morale to strengthening Iran's defensive and offensive capabilities, its integration of military forces, and its use of indigenous technologies to deter external threats.
Heightened sense of threat
"The Iranians clearly see a heightened military threat from Israel and the U.S.," Nadimi said.
Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has toughened U.S. warnings of consequences for Iran if it refines its enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels and fashions it into a nuclear warhead. Tehran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons.
"They cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if I think that they will have a nuclear weapon, despite what I just said, I think that's going to be very unfortunate for them," Trump said in a Feb. 4 joint news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a Feb. 16 appearance with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem, Netanyahu noted that Israel had dealt what he called a "mighty blow to Iran's terror axis" over the prior 16 months. That included Israel's first-ever major aerial assault on the Islamic Republic, a sustained late-October strike on what Israel said were Iranian air defense and missile facilities in retaliation for a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles on Israel earlier that month.
"Under the strong leadership of President Trump and with your unflinching support, I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job," Netanyahu said.
Responding to a VOA request for comment on Iran's military exercises, the Israeli military said it "conducts continuous situational assessments to ensure preparedness for a wide range of scenarios, both defensive and offensive."
A spokesperson for Netanyahu declined to comment when asked by VOA about the Israeli government's assessment of the Iranian drills.
The U.S. Defense Department did not respond to a VOA inquiry about its view of the exercises.
Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project said the Islamic Republic feels exposed because of recent setbacks to its proxies and allies in Lebanon and Syria. Israel killed the leaders of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group and destroyed much of its weaponry in a two-month offensive from September to November, while Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria ousted its longtime Iran-allied autocratic ruler, Bashar Assad, in December.
"The Iranian air defense and naval exercises are meant to deter the U.S. and Israel from attacking key Iranian sites after Israel's degradation of Hezbollah left Iran without its primary deterrent against such an attack," Carter said. "Many of the ground exercises, on the other hand, seek to better protect western Iran from what Tehran sees as a renewed Sunni terrorist threat in Syria and Iraq."
Some of those Iranian drills involved weapons systems that could harm Israel and the U.S. if Iran retaliated for an attack, the researchers said.
"Iran's stockpile of long- and short-range ballistic missiles continues to pose a serious threat to Israel and U.S. bases in the region," Nadimi said. "Iran can fire hundreds of ballistic missiles at any given time and saturate Israeli or U.S. air defenses."
Carter said Iran's naval forces also have fast-moving small boats armed with anti-ship missiles that could swarm and threaten U.S. naval vessels in the region.
Nadimi said one aspect of the recent exercises that exposed an Iranian weakness is the limited or non-usage of advanced weaponry and tactics by regular Iranian military units.
"I have not seen widespread use of modern systems like Rezvan loitering munition FPV [First Person View] drones and Shahed-149 ‘Gaza’ high-altitude long endurance (HALE) drones by regular IRGC and Army units," Nadimi said. "Only Iran's elite military units have been using those systems widely."
Carter said another weakness is a reliance on indigenous Iranian air defense systems after Israel destroyed units of Iran's most advanced system, the Russian-made S-300, last October.
"It is unlikely that Iran could repel a U.S. or Israeli airstrike given the inferiority of the Iranian systems that have been used in these exercises relative to the modern U.S. and Israeli capabilities," Carter said.
VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.
