Military budget of Iran
Share of service branches in defence budget of 2020–21, based on calculations by Henry Rome[1]
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
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
Sources
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 $8 billion that year. In 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that it was unable to make accurate numbers using conversion of Iranian official reports in rial to U.S. dollar, the number in 1993 was 2,507 billion rials.[4] Other sources estimating military budget of Iran include the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Iranian The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also produces its own figures.[4]
Under the Shah (until 1979)
According to data compiled by Shahram Chubin and Sepehr Zabih, the estimated military expenditure of Iran from 1960 to 1972, in constant price of 1960 and with exchange rate of the same year, would be calculated as the following:
| Year | Estimated Spending (mil$. ) | % 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$. ) | Population (mil.) | Per capita | % of GDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 |  212[2]
|
15.8[2]
|
13.4[2]
| |
| 1955 |  291[2]
|
18.7[2]
|
15.6[2]
| |
| 1960 | 577[2]
|
21.3[2]
|
27.1[2]
|
4.3[2]
|
| 1965 | 862[2]
|
24.8[2]
|
34.6[2]
|
4.9[2]
|
| 1970 | 1,906[2]
|
29.2[2]
|
65.3[2]
|
6.6[2]
|
| 1975 | 10,168[2]
|
33.3[2]
|
304.4[2]
|
13.1[2]
|
| 1976 | 11,031[2]
|
33.7[2]
|
327.3[2]
|
 12.5[2]
|
| 1977 | 8,902[2]
|
34.3[2]
|
230.4[2]
|
10.8[2]
|
| 1978 | 9,500[2]
|
35.1[2]
|
270.6[2]
|
13.0[2]
|
SIPRI annual estimates since 1960
| Year | Current amount ($ 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
- Iran’s public budget
- List of countries by military expenditures
- Past military expenditure by country
- List of countries by military expenditure per capita
References
- ^ Rome, Henry (17 June 2020), "Iran's Defense Spending", The Iran Primer, The United States Institute for Peace
- ^ 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
- ^ 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
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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