Iranian defense industry
The Iranian defense industry has grown rapidly in the 25 years leading up to 2019 and is now producing many different types of weapons and equipment. Iranian officials said the country sold over US $ 100 million worth of military goods in 2003 and had exported weapons systems to 57 countries by 2006.
history
The arms industry of Iran came into being under the last Iranian Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi . In 1973, Iran Electronics Industries (IEI) was established to organize efforts to assemble and repair foreign-supplied weapon systems. Most of Iran's weapons prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution were imported from the US and Europe. Between 1971 and 1975, the Shah went into a shopping frenzy, purchasing weapons systems worth over $ 38 billion from the United States alone. This worried the US Congress , which thereupon in 1976 reinforced a law of 1968 on the export of arms and renamed it the Arms Export Control Act . Still, the US continued to sell large quantities of arms to Iran until the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In 1979, the Iranian Defense Industries Organization began to work on missiles with Israel as part of Project Flower and applied for a joint missile development program with the US, which was rejected. In 1979, Iran took the first step towards industrial production of missile systems through the reverse engineering of Soviet RPG-7 , BM-21 and SA-7 missiles.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, economic sanctions and an international arms embargo, led by the USA, as well as a high demand for military hardware forced Iran to fall back on its own arms industry for repairs and spare parts. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard was entrusted with the task of reorganizing the domestic arms industry. Under their leadership, the Iranian arms industry expanded significantly, so that Iran soon acquired an arsenal of missiles with the help of funds from the Iranian Defense Ministry.
Since 1992 Iran has had its own battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, guided missiles, a submarine and a fighter aircraft.
In 2007, in the context of events related to the Iranian nuclear program , the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran prohibiting it from exporting any form of weapon systems.