Iran Status Report

US policy towards Iran requires more than dialogue. It requires careful consideration of Iran’s evolving military capabilities and the range of threats it can pose to its neighbors, the wider Middle East, and to the flow of world oil exports. Iran’s capabilities are complex, and vary from “wars of intimidation” to its ongoing development of long range missile systems and nuclear weapons.

The Burke Chair has developed a new brief that analyzes Iran’s military forces and their mission capabilities in map and graphic form. This brief has been written by Anthony H. Cordesman and Adam C. Seitz, and is entitled "Iran Status Report: Iran and the Challenges to US Policy." It can be downloaded from the Burke Chair section of the CSIS web site here: https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/publication/090812_iranbrief.pdf

It describes Iran’s conventional forces, capabilities for asymmetric warfare and wars of intimidation, capabilities to threaten the flow of shipping in the Gulf, missile developments, and nuclear programs. Suggestions for additional coverage and analysis are welcome and should be forwarded to Anthony H. Cordesman at acordesman@gmail.com.

This report is the first report in a series of three.

Next week “GCC-Iran: Operational Analysis of Air, SAM and TBM Forces” will be released. The following week “Threats, Risks and Vulnerabilities: Terrorism and Asymmetric Warfare in the Gulf” will be released.

Additional work on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and Israeli and Iranian nuclear options are available at:

https://www.csis.org/programs/burke-chair-strategy/iran/irans-military-and-nuclear-capabilities

In addition, a new CSIS/Praeger book on Iranian military forces and Iran’s missile and WMD programs, entitled "Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction" will be published Summer, 2009.