Military budget of Iran

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Share of service branches in defence budget of 2020–21, based on calculations by Henry Rome[1]

  IRGC (34%)
  Police (19%)
  Defence ministry (7%)
  Social Security (27%)

The military budget of Iran is the portion of the country's overall budget that is allocated for the funding of the Iranian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.

Contributing factors[edit]

Research shows that oil revenue has been a major economic factor on military spending of Iran and in the 1970s led to "petrodollar recycling".[2]

A study investigating the impact of sanctions against Iran on the country's military spending, examining historical record between from 1960 to 2017 and using auto-regressive distributed lag model (ARDL), found that unilateral sanctions by the United States would have insignificant effect on Iran's expenditure while multilateral sanctions (imposed by the United Nations and the European Union in addition to the U.S.) would be statistically significant.[3]

Estimates[edit]

Sources[edit]

There are multiple sources estimating the military expenditure of Iran, however differences exist between the numbers.[4] An example is a dispute among U.S. government agencies; while the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) estimated Iranian 1993 expenditure to be $4.9 billion, U.S. intelligence experts believed Iran had spent up to $8 billion that year. In 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that it was unable to make accurate numbers using conversion of Iranian official reports in rial to U.S. dollar, the number in 1993 was 2,507 billion rials.[4] Other sources estimating military budget of Iran include the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Iranian The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also produces its own figures.[4]

Under the Shah (until 1979)[edit]

According to data compiled by Shahram Chubin and Sepehr Zabih, the estimated military expenditure of Iran from 1960 to 1972, in constant price of 1960 and with exchange rate of the same year, would be calculated as the following:

Year Estimated Spending (mil$. ) % of GDP
IISS SIPRI ACDA IISS SIPRI ACDA
1960 166[5] 182.9[5]
1961 147.6[5] 181[5] 4.4[5]
1962 125[5] 186[5] 180.1[5] 4.1[5]
1963 170[5] 191[5] 183[5] 3.9[5]
1964 195[5] 233[5] 201.2[5] 4.1[5] 4.6[5]
1965 217[5] 227[5] 250.11[5] 3.8[5] 3.8[5]
1966 255[5] 322[5] 285[5] 3.9[5] 5.0[5]
1967 480[5] 440[5] 366.3[5] 4.9[5] 5.9[5]
1968 495[5] 553[5] 465.7[5] 5.6[5] 6.9[5]
1969 594[5] 648[5] 536.9[5] 5.0[5] 7.1[5]
1970 779[5] 833[5] 619.5[5] 7.1[5] 8.2[5]
1971 1,023[5] 686.7[5] 8.5[5]
1972 1,915[5]

Morteza Gharehbaghian has compiled the following table based on Statistical Centre of Iran's consensus and various issues of SIPRI:

Year Spending (mil$. ) Population (mil.) Per capita % of GDP
1950 Steady 212[2] Steady 15.8[2] Steady 13.4[2]
1955 Increase 291[2] Increase 18.7[2] Increase 15.6[2]
1960 Increase 577[2] Increase 21.3[2] Increase 27.1[2] Steady 4.3[2]
1965 Increase 862[2] Increase 24.8[2] Increase 34.6[2] Increase 4.9[2]
1970 Increase 1,906[2] Increase 29.2[2] Increase 65.3[2] Increase 6.6[2]
1975 Increase 10,168[2] Increase 33.3[2] Increase 304.4[2] Increase 13.1[2]
1976 Increase 11,031[2] Increase 33.7[2] Increase 327.3[2] Decrease 12.5[2]
1977 Decrease 8,902[2] Increase 34.3[2] Decrease 230.4[2] Decrease 10.8[2]
1978 Increase 9,500[2] Increase 35.1[2] Increase 270.6[2] Increase 13.0[2]

SIPRI annual estimates since 1960[edit]

Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database
Year Current amount ($ mil.) Constant 2019 amount ($ mil.) % of GDP % of Gov Budget
1960 98.7 692 2.3%
1961 105.9 720 2.3%
1962 109.9 741 2.3%
1963 128.7 865 2.6%
1964 155.4 1006 2.9%
1965 200.0 1268 3.2%
1966 256.1 1629 3.8%
1967 331.0 2073 4.5%
1968 437.3 2720 5.2%
1969 566.0 3398 6.0%
1970 620.1 3662 5.9%
1971 402.3 2280 3.0%
1972 371.9 1981 2.3%
1973 480.9 2121 1.9%
1974 3877.9 14702 8.8%
1975 5951.0 19991 12.1%
1976 7186.3 22527 11.2%
1977 7617.2 18865 10.2%
1978 8113.7 17950 11.1%
1979 4993.8 9999 5.8%
1980 4874.9 8107 5.3%
1981 8121.6 12062 8.2%
1982 9703.5 12960 7.9%
1983 10550.4 12155 7.1%
1984 9926.3 10594 6.4%
1985 10706.4 11070 6.5%
1986 11741.4 8868 6.1%
1987 15263.4 8135 5.9%
1988 18889.0 7520 6.3%
1989 16301.8 5562 4.6%
1990 16474.4 4938 2.2% 14.5%
1991 17549.6 4452 2.9% 12.5%
1992 19732.6 3864 1.8% 9.9%
1993 1448.2 4525 1.7% 5.1%
1994 1703.2 5584 2.1% 7.6%
1995 2501.5 5478 2.2% 8.5%
1996 3551.0 6041 2.2% 10.6%
1997 4642.4 6738 2.5% 11.9%
1998 5479.4 6743 2.6% 12.9%
1999 6650.3 6821 2.4% 12.6%
2000 8327.1 7509 2.3% 14.0%
2001 10378.8 8359 2.4% 14.5%
2002 3243.9 8998 2.2% 10.9%
2003 3717.1 10502 2.4% 12.1%
2004 5243.6 13571 2.8% 15.2%
2005 6796.7 16138 3.0% 14.1%
2006 8751.5 19323 3.3% 14.2%
2007 9330.9 17769 2.7% 14.0%
2008 11082.0 17095 2.7% 12.6%
2009 12584.6 17886 3.0% 15.3%
2010 13561.3 18200 2.8% 15.2%
2011 14277.7 15708 2.4% 13.0%
2012 16494.0 16354 2.8% 19.3%
2013 11997.2 13170 2.2% 15.6%
2014 9901.1 13131 2.3% 14.8%
2015 10588.8 13962 2.8% 15.4%
2016 12264.0 16028 3.0% 15.2%
2017 13931.2 18034 3.1% 16.0%
2018 11230.9 15257 2.5% 13.9%
2019 12528.5 12528 2.1% 12.6%
2020 15825.1 12151 2.2% 11.7%

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Rome, Henry (17 June 2020), "Iran's Defense Spending", The Iran Primer, The United States Institute for Peace
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai Gharehbaghian, Morteza (1987), "Oil Revenue and the Militarisation of Iran: 1960-1978", Social Scientist, 15 (4/5): 87–100, doi:10.2307/3517317, JSTOR 3517317
  3. ^ Farzanegan, Mohammad Reza; Dizaji, Sajjad Faraji (2018), "Do sanctions reduce the military spending in Iran?", Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics, doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.31059.22563
  4. ^ a b c Cordesman, Anthony H. (1999). Iran's Military Forces in Transition: Conventional Threats and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. pp. 41–42. ISBN 0-275-96529-5.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az Chubin, Shahram; Zabih, Sepehr (1974), The Foreign Relations of Iran: A Developing State in a Zone of Great Power Conflict, University of California Press, pp. 125–129, ISBN 9780520026834