An Analysis of Iran’s 1405 Budget S. Rouzbeh ۱۹ دی ۱۴۰۴ Iran’s 1405 military and security budget appears to prioritise regime survival and domestic control over national defence, with the army left behind despite its larger personnel strength. Questions remain about opaque budget figures, defence spending and the consequences of this political choice. The 1405 Budget and the Doctrine of Survival: When Regime Security Takes Precedence over National Defence S. Rouzbeh If the authorities’ priority after the “12-day war” really is rebuilding defensive capabilities and preparing for external threats, why does the army remain at the bottom of the list? If the threat is external, why is more of the budget directed towards institutions whose role is more prominent inside the country? And a more fundamental question: when even the units and scales of the figures get mixed up in republications, should this budget be regarded as a national defence plan or a survival plan? A simple example is enough to clarify the picture. Imagine a building threatened both by fire and by an internal uprising. A manager who fears an uprising more will spend money on guards, cameras, a rapid-response unit and controlling access—not on reinforcement, fire-suppression systems and infrastructure repairs. The 1405 military and security budget gives off precisely the scent of this choice: “control” comes before “defence”. The starting point for the discussion is the total budget figure itself. The official report states that the total national budget, in terms of resources and expenditure, is “14,441 billion rials”. Here, a serious alarm bell rings: when media accounts shift between tomans, rials and “hemats” without precise explanation, analysis is left standing on slippery ground. This ambiguity is not merely a typographical error; it is a structural sign of a lack of transparency in the budget-drafting and reporting system. Now we come to the distribution of the defence and security budget—the very point where the disparity becomes visible. According to the published account, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is allocated “245”, the Law Enforcement Command “130”, the Ministry of Defence “602” and the army “87”. Even if there is debate about the units, the direction of the figures sends a clear message: the army sits at the bottom of the table, while the pillars of the regime’s survival come first. In the same context, another report has described the Ministry of Defence’s appropriations as rising “from 245 to 602”—that is, a channel through which projects, supply chains, defence industries and less transparent routes typically pass. To move “injustice” beyond the realm of feeling and perception, we need to set the size of the forces alongside these allocations. The CIA World Factbook’s 2023 estimate puts Iran’s active forces at around “600,000 personnel”, broken down as approximately “400,000” in the army, “150,000 to 190,000” in the Revolutionary Guard and around “90,000” active Basij members. In other words, the army has a larger personnel base, yet remains lower in the announced allocations. This is where the “doctrine” gives itself away: the aim is not to build a powerful professional force for conventional defence; it is to strengthen a force that possesses both asymmetric deterrence and a role in domestic control. Within the country, too, the strengthening of the Law Enforcement Command can be read in precisely the same light. When a police official says that Iran has “2.5 police officers” for every 1,000 people, while at the same time figures of “more than 220,000 personnel” or even “more than 250,000 personnel” are cited for heightened alert during sensitive events, it is clear that, for the government, the “capacity to be present on the streets” and the “capacity for control” are necessary expenses. This spending may come at the cost of falling behind in investment in the army’s conventional capabilities. Another important layer is the gap between the “official account” and the “actual cost”. In its military expenditure fact sheet, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates Iran’s military expenditure in 2024 at around “$7.9 billion”. This figure is important, but it can also mislead if viewed on its own, since discrepancies may arise from exchange rates, multiple exchange rates, hidden budget lines, off-budget financing and quasi-corporate channels. The practical implication for analysis is this: even if we read the budget figures accurately, we may still be seeing only “the tip of the iceberg”. The blunt conclusion is this: what appears to be “injustice” is in fact a “political choice”. The Islamic Republic does not define security in terms of “national security”; it defines it in terms of “regime security”. In this definition, the Revolutionary Guard and its allied networks take priority as the ideological and strategic arm, and the Law Enforcement Command as the arm of domestic control, while the professional army is left on the margins. The army is not meant to be the centre of gravity; it is meant to fill the frame, while the centre of gravity stands somewhere that its ideological loyalty and political-economic role are more reassuring to the system. And there are several unanswered questions that will shed light on what lies ahead: if another security shock occurs, exactly which priority and which channel will fund the rebuilding of the army’s air-defence and air capabilities? How far will the erosion of morale, pay and personnel retention in the army go when the gap between allocations is so plain to see? What is the Revolutionary Guard’s real share of the Ministry of Defence’s funding channel, and how much of it can be traced and held to account? And finally, if the domestic crisis intensifies, will an increase in the budget for control bring “stability”, or will it merely raise the cost of repression while making it less effective? Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-c27701cc-6b11-51f7-bf55-d57b17663751 Please credit the author and link to this edition.