Friday, November 29, 2019

Not Every Raggedy Fighter is a Guerrilla

The Department of Defense put out its report on Iranian military power. I'm planning on reading that but I have to comment on this nonsense on page 4:

The IRGC and Basij, a volunteer paramilitary reserve force, relied on guerrilla-warfare tactics and later used extremely costly human wave attacks along the front. [emphasis added]

While it is true that the Basij were used for human wave assaults, the IRGC (Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards) initially fought not as guerrillas but as light infantry, relying on the army for tanks, heavy weapons, and logistics.

As the war went on the IRGC got heavier weapons to duplicate the capabilities of the often mistrusted army. But the Basij always remained the lightly armed and ill-trained cannon fodder.

Also, there was a very defined and often static front line.

The idea that this represented guerrilla warfare is nonsense. You'd do better to consult this long post of a paper summarizing the war.