The military history of Iran dates back millennia. Even before settling in what is now Iran, Indo-Iranian tribes had invented the chariot by around 2000 BC. During their expansion into Iran and Central Asia during the early first millennium BC, Iranians developed the concept of cavalry, being the first people in the world to ride horses in battle on a large scale. Ancient Iranians were also noteworthy for the participation of women in battle; up to 20% of some tribes' warrior graves have female remains.
The Achaemenid Empire, which at its peak ruled over nearly half of the world's population, was known for the huge number of troops it fielded. Though ancient sources were prone to exaggeration, the Achaemenids could raise armies on an unprecedented scale. The most well-known Achaemenid unit was the Immortals, an elite 10,000-man corps that was so named because each casualty was immediately replaced, keeping the unit size constant.
The Achaemenid Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great, but a few decades later the Parthians, an Iranian tribe originating in what is now Turkmenistan, revolted against Greek rule and eventually conquered the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia. The Parthian army was based on a one-two punch of horse archers and heavy cavalry.
The Sassanid dynasty from Persia replaced the Parthians in AD 224. The Sassanids were known for their elite heavy cavalry, the Savaran. They were The Rival to The Roman Empire, and after a particularly exhausting war with Rome they were conquered by the Arabs.
For centuries later, Iran was ruled by Arabs and then by a succession of lesser Iranian and Turkish kingdoms until the rise of the next Iranian empire under the Safavids. The Safavid army was originally centered on the Qizilbash Turkmen who brought the dynasty to power. Later on, the Shah added musketeers and artillery in order to keep up with the neighboring Ottoman Empire, to whom the Safavids were frequently The Rival. The collapse of the Safavids led to disorder which eventually caused Iran's territory to shrink to its current borders.
The modern Iranian army's history starts with Reza Shah's military reforms. He sent his officers to train in western academies and also brought in foreign advisors to train his soldiers. Reza Shah also established an air force and a new navy.
After the Iranian revolution, the new authorities established the Revolutionary Guards, which deal with internal security. The Revolutionary Guards are Iran's State Sec: they have their own army, navy, and air force; they also have nominal control of the Basij, a paramilitary militia that acts as the government's street thugs and Culture Police. Iran also developed its domestic arms industry after the revolution, as it found itself diplomatically isolated.
The last major war Iran has fought is the Iran-Iraq War. It was a very bloody war which eventually ended with no gains for either side, but it had a profound effect on Iranians, who lost up to 500,000 people in the war. The Iranians enlisted anyone from Child Soldiers to the elderly, though the use of children in the military was illegal under Iranian law (this was bypassed as people weren't checking ID's at the time). Iranian religious fervor and nationalism were very intense during the war, in some cases resulting in soldiers being used in waves to clear minefields, being told they would be martyrs and go straight to heaven. After the war, they had to use their experience to reform the then purged army and focus their efforts on rebuilding their armed forces after a long decade of near exhaustion and destruction, leading to Iran accepting deals from Russia and China.
The Iranian Armed Forces consists of the Artesh (regular army), the Sepah (the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or IRGC) and the Basij (Police). Iran as of recently has used Sepah as an expeditionary force, fighting in places like Syria and helping it's Houthi and Hezbollah allies in Yemen and Lebanon respectively. During the last decade of the cold war, Iran funded Hezbollah to fight off Israel, eventually culminating into the 2007 war which was a costly failure in the eyes of the Israeli Defense Forces, vindicating the Iranians and Hezbollah. With this in mind, Iran has centered it's tactics around using heavily armed militias and asymmetrical warfare to counter what it perceives as it's threats, building up an 'Axis of Resistance' consisting of Syria, the Houthi-Yemeni government, and Iraq. The most recent example of Iranian deployment would be the Syrian Civil War, where they successfully fought ISIS (With the US also helping), and have now been going toe-to-toe with the United States, which may or may not escalate into a full-blown conflict, no matter how costly it will be for both sides.
Iran, like Afghanistan, is heavily fortified with mountainous terrain and is a mostly developed nation which while lacking in modern conventional hardware, is most certainly capable of using it's asymmetrical capabilities to strike blows to any particular invading army (And we're talking about uniformed soldiers, not rebels in technicals). This has led to many analysts considering a US-Iranian war to be a no-go, with the cost assumed to be far deadlier than Iraq or Afghanistan.
Many people accuse Iran's government of attempting to build nuclear weapons, though Iran, of course vehemently denies. Iran does however have a massive stockpile of domestically produced ballistic missiles which are all capable of carrying warheads.
In western works, Iran's military usually serves as a generic Middle Eastern antagonist, being almost easy to vilify. In Eastern works, expect little to be seen of them unless they're specifically made in the Middle East.
Also see Iran.
The Sassanids in fiction
- They are a playable faction in the Empire Divided expansion for Total War: Rome II , and Total War: Attila.
The Iranian Armed Forces in fiction
- The Iranian Army is a playable side in Graviteam Tactics: Shield of the Prophet, where it fights the Soviet Army over control of western Afghanistan.
- JAG: In "The Black Jet", Harm and Mac stages a jailbreak of downed pilot Keeter from an Iranian prison, and is chased by the Iranian Army to the location of the not-crashed airplane.
- ArmA III, features a Iranian-Chinese led CSAT military alliance as one of the main three factions, with their forces in Altis and Stratis were also primarily made up of Iranian military personnel.
- Splinter Cell: Blacklist features several encounters with Qods Force commandos, including a later mission which takes place in the heart of Qods Force headquarters in Tehran.
- Battlefield 3 takes place across Iran, besides Paris and New York City. In singleplayer, you fight the PLR, an Iranian paramilitary group, lead by Faruk Al-Bashir. The actual Iranian Military never show up and what happened to them is never brought up.
- The Brave has a two-episode arc where the SOG unit goes to infiltrate Tehran to eliminate a Qods Force commander who orchestrated a truck bombing in Turkey that targeted U.S. military personnel.
- In SEAL Team Season 3 episode 3, the "Armenian militia" that takes over the power plant in Nagorno-Karabakh actually turns out to be a unit of Iranian Qods Force commandos who are wearing unmarked uniforms and passing themselves off as mercenaries. Episode 8 of that same season features the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps hunting an F-35 pilot who was shot down over the Iran-Iraq border on the Iranian side. The Greater-Scope Villain of Season 6 also turns out to be Iranian General Rojavi who has been secretly loaning Iranian-made copies of American drones to the Al-Sham Brigade in northern Syria so they can airstrike civilians with them and blame it on the United States.
- One of the main antagonists in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Major Hassan Zyani, is a disgruntled Qods Force officer who orchestrated terrorist attacks against the United States using their own missiles as retaliation for sanctioning the assassination of his superior.
