This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests.
Hossein Aryan is a senior correspondent with RFE/RL’s Iranian service, Radio Farda. Aryan joined RFE/RL in 2007, after serving as a naval officer for 18 years and spending nine years monitoring and covering Iran and South Caucasus news for the BBC. Hossein has been a part-time lecturer in Middle Eastern Politics at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Graduate of Britannia Royal Naval College, UK; BSc (Maritime), Iran; Diploma in Management Studies (DMS), Nor-thumbria University, UK; MA in Political Economy, Durham University, UK.
The Artesh: Iran’s Marginalized and Under-Armed Conventional Military
Originally posted November, 2011
Ravaged, intimidated, and gutted to the core in a series of purges after the 1979 Revolution, the remnant of the Shah’s military, renamed the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, known generally in Persian as the Artesh, put itself together as best as it could to face invading Iraqi forces at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war.
