Well if there was any doubt about the British government being for sale, that should put an end to speculation.

At 43 billion pounds sterling (close to $90 billion), I believe you'll find that most governments are for sale.

As I point out in the article, the strategic rationales invoked are somewhat questionable. Yes, the Saudis can supply useful intelligence on al-Qaeda if they desire - but of course they're playing both sides which makes them "frenemies". The British can encourage the Saudis to take up the Sunni side of the current proxy wars with Iran, however, and (unlike the USA) not have to worry about blowback in their Iraqi area of responsibility. Air superiority fighters will help the Saudis do that with more confidence.

Mostly, however, I think this is about money for the British - and of course the Europeans at EADS (Franco-German-Spanish) and Alenia (Italy) benefit too since Typhoon is a multinational project. For the Saudis, it's a diversification play similar to their American-equipped ground units and French ground units.

Clearly, there is a race (and arms sales bonanza) to shore up the unbalanced balance of power brought about by the failure of the Iraq War and the emergence of Iran as a regional heavyweight.

It would be interesting to pit the new Typhoon and SU30 against the venerable IRIAF F-14A Tomcat, examples of which have been refurbished and continue to flly in the Iranian Air Force. It should be remembered that IRIAF Tomcats accounted for over 150 confirmed kills during the Iran-Iraq War.

Remember, in the air-to-air game, it's the man not the machine. Last time I checked, Indian pilots were still floundering with attempts at air-to-air refueling. And Saudi pilots still required constant wet-nursing from US support crews for technical assistance of all kinds.

Mark,

Military expenditures as a percent of GDP:

1. Oman - 11.4%
2. Qatar - 10.0%
3. Saudi Arabia - 10.0%
4. Iraq - 8.60%
5. Jordan - 8.60%
6. Israel - 7.30%
12. Syria - 5.90%
16. Kuwait - 5.30%
17. Turkey - 5.30%

66. Iran - 2.50%

From the C.I.A.

Iran isn't spending enough on its military to become a "regional heavyweight."

I bet America and Israel spend more on anti-Iranian propaganda each year than Iran spends on its military.

They may even be paying Iran to play the part of the next post-Saddam bogeyman.

So alphie, Iran is not trying to throw around its weight in the region by such acts as funding its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon ? And Iran isn't working with Syria on WMD as reported by Jane's? Instead, just a percentage of expenditure by GDP is sufficient to rebut all those reports?

"Proxy" is a rather loaded term, Robin.

I believe we use the term "aid recipient" to describe the groups America is funding in the Middle East.

Yes, I'm aware of the GDP percentages. But you must also take into account relative population size, conscription and arms manufacturing. Iran's population is nearly as large as the rest of the Middle East put together. There is madatory consciption. And, as a result of measures taken after the Iran-Iraq, the country is largely self-sufficient in small arms production. There is no question that Iran is militarily stronger than any and all the Gulf States. Eurofighter Typhoons won't change this much, if any. Really, what the arms sales represent is an enhanced Western military relationship with the Gulf States, in the form of supplier/client.

All of Iran's regular armed forces take a back seat to the Pasdaran, which operate the country's ballistic and cruise missiles among other things.

Iranian regional expansion takes a different form than overt military conquest, as this was tried unsuccessfully during the Iran-Iraq War. Sources of regional influence have yielded far better results, especially recently, in places such as south Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories. Errors in US and Israeli policies, in both military operations and foreign relations, have facilitated Iran's rise as a regional power. Efforts are being made to reverse this situation, so far with little to show in actual gain. A potential military strike by the West against Iran should be viewed within this framework.

Haha, Mark,

I believe it was America's "proxy" Saddam Hussein who invaded Iran, not the other way round.

Let's face it, it's the skill of Hamas and Hezbollah that have people worried, not the source of their funds.

America spends more in week in Iraq that Iran spends in year on "proxies," but we always seem to back losers.

The Iran hate is because they back winners.

Our time and money would be better spent backing a few winners of our own instead of worrying what Iran is doing.

Alphie, israel appears to be the strongest power in the region, probably more powerful defensively than any other. Objectively it doesn't make sense to think of Hesbollah as a "winner", what they did was survive an israeli invasion, taking big losses while israel took small losses. They won compared to the false perception that israel could smash anybody and take no losses themselves.

Israel is the only nation in the area with nukes. They have access to all US military technology, and US-trained developers have invented their own military technology that we don't have. They are better at mobilising their troops than anyone else, and their troops have better training. The israeli air force can easily beat any regional air force that can reach them, and they can reach nations that can't reach them at all.

Israel is the undisputed military leader in the area. If they have a fault it's in holding to policies that leave them with no friend in the world but the USA. But the evidence isn't in yet -- maybe that's the only friend they need.

alphie #8:
You say "...America's "proxy" Saddam Hussein who invaded Iran..."
However, this is hardly accurate.
At that point Saddam was a client of the USSR, not the USA.
The US later provided limited support in terms of intelligence and of not obstructing Iraq's finance and supply conduits to avoid the possibility which existed for a time of an Iranian victory.

It was not in the interests of the US for either Iraq or Iran to achieve victory and potential dominance in the Gulf/Arabia region. And the states of that region were pretty obviously fearful of both possibilities too; see origins of Iraqs invasion of Kuwait.

Robin Roberts #1:
Re "the British government being for sale" would you say the same of the American government and its recent arms deals with Saudi Arabia?
Or do the rules change depending on what side of the Atlantic you are on?

Iranian military spending since the revolution has been limited by their economic wretchedness and the limited number of countries that will sell them arms. Albeit, that limited number of countries includes Russia, which sold them a whopping $7 billion worth of pointy sticks in 2001 - paid for with about 70% of an oil price windfall.

Seven billion dollars in one year is a buttload of weapons, so it's not surprising if subsequent expenditures have been a bit sparse.

Iranian military strategy has not traditionally relied on modern high-tech equipment, anyway. Their style is more the human wave of 12 year-old boys. When they run out of those it will be 12 year-old girls, if there are any left that haven't been hanged for letting themselves be raped.

In short, Iran is not my favorite nation. I do not picture them as a nation of peace-infested hippies. In that, I must respectfully disagree with Alphie, staunch Republican that he is.

Glen,

It's true that Iran used human waves to counter Saddam's invasion, but, I'll just point out once again that Iran was invaded...they didn't start the war.

Are you trying to say Iran didn't have the right to defend themselves?

And, as John pointed out, Saddam was not America's "proxy" when he decided to invade Iran. But shortly after Saddam invaded Iran, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of terrorist sponsoring countries so America could supply him with intelligence, arms and quite possibly...chemical weapons.

Conventional military power seems like a quaint notion in the Middle East these days...but a still a rather profitable one(for the West).

#10 from John Farren:

"Robin Roberts #1: Re "the British government being for sale" would you say the same of the American government and its recent arms deals with Saudi Arabia?
Or do the rules change depending on what side of the Atlantic you are on?"

They don't change depending on what side of the Pacific you are on. That kind of money could put an Australian government up for sale.

As I point out in the article, the strategic rationales invoked are somewhat questionable. Yes, the Saudis can supply useful intelligence on al-Qaeda if they desire - but of course they're playing both sides which makes them "frenemies".

The Saudis are the friends of most government employees world wide and they're the friends of weapons salesmen. They are, when it's convenient, happy to work with the Iranians. They treat al Qaeda the way any nation would treat its army - attack abroad, but no attacks or coups at home please. When al Qaeda breaks the rules, the Saudis 'help' us.

Governments and defense contractors benefit from their friendship with Saudi Arabia - defense contractors make money and governments get to play their old, cold war games, but the only benefit the ordinary person sees from the Saudis is our status as soft targets for terrorism.

Most people worldwide expect their governments to treat them as garbage and cannon fodder. British behavior indicates that they must be used to this by now. But Americans have this weird idea that our elected representatives should, you know, represent us. It's not clear how long people will be willing to tolerate this kind of thing. Hopefully, we'll see in the next election.

Once again, alphie, you are thread hijacking here.

#10, I'm not talking about the arms sale itself, but that the Saudi's threat not to contract for the aircraft caused Britain to shut down the investigation into the kickback scheme that was in violation of British law. I am not aware of any time when the US shut down a criminal investigation at the threat of canceling a weapons purchase.

J Thomas:
Military outcomes can come in various grades, such as marginal, decisive, tactical, strategic and more. Unfortunately for Israel, it did not achieve any grade of victory during the 2nd Lebanon War. It should be conceded that the defenders of south Lebanon scored a tactical victory by managing to maintain a fortified defensive line. What is more, it scored a minor economic victory by means of a blockade that took effect from continued Katyusha rocket artillery attacks throughout the north and the important port city of Haifa.

In the wake of the self-admitted failure of the 2nd Lebanon War, Israeli inquiries have pointed out deficiencies in both mobilization efforts and infantry training.

A matchup between the Iranian F-14A and Israeli F-16L has been touted but remains an unlikely scenario.

BTW: I suspect Iran has a small arsenal of nuclear weapons that could have been included with their purchase of 12 Kh-56 cruise missiles from Ukraine. (I for one would not trust the word of self-admitted, illegal arms smugglers.)

John Farren: You've neglected the destruction of the Iranian Merchant Convoy Escort fleet by the US Navy, during the Iran-Iraq War. Also, there were a number of USN attacks on Iranian positions during Iraqi military crises at Faw and Majnoon Island, before the city of Basra.

The Eurofighter is not a fourth generation aircraft. The aircraft is thought of so highly that the initial countries are trying to get out of their follow-on purchases.

The only reason these countries have not cancelled is because the first one to do so will absorb the majority of the cancellation costs.

One thing that is interesting about Iran's shill Alphie is that unexpectedly, he points out the diverging strategies in military hardware that Iran and the rest of the region and the US are pursuing.

Iran was decisively defeated in the Gulf when the US Navy in 1988 sank the Iranian Navy in about a day after attacks on US escorted ships in the Gulf. Guerilla warfare does not work on sea or land. Only technical prowess does.

What Iran HAS done is bet it all on ballistic missiles. The Syrian-Iranian "work accident" loading sarin onto a Scud warhead (Janes is reporting that the warhead blew up killing the Iranian and Syrian engineers at the launch site) is indicative of this, Iranian officials were present at both North Korea's nuke tests and missile launch. Various rumors are swirling about Iranian or North Korean nuke or missile or both facilities being bombed by the Israelis.

Is the bet on Ballistic missiles a foolish one?

I don't think so. Leveraging modest investments in military hardware and having missiles in civilian areas as "shields" and such allows Iran to threaten everyone. From the reaction of both Chirac and Sarkozy, it's clear to me that Iran has threatened France as the "protector" of France's muslims -- should they declare an independent Islamic nation within France Iran would protect them with potentially nuclear missiles and there is nothing France or anyone else can do about it. Except of course surrender.

Sarkozy did not say he'd prepare for war with Iran rather than allow them to be nuclear because he's a war monger. His direct interests (losing parts of France to an Iranian supported Islamic Republic) are threatened. That Chirac said the same thing speaks to the same thing. [Chirac famously threatened to use France's nukes if French interests were threatened by some nebulous "threat"].

Postmodern PC Multiculturalism allows enemies to threaten (and carry out such threats) western nations with impunity, particularly if they hide behind their civilians. All the air forces and such won't do any good if they cannot hit missile bases pre-emptively without regard to civilian losses on the enemy's side.

Next Question: Is Europe (or be honest, France) using Eurofighters as a proxy to smash Iran's nukes or as a deterrent? I don't think they'll be online in any sufficient numbers, nor are Arab pilots capable of independent action. Questions of regime stability limit effectiveness of Arab Air Forces which are a risk to the regimes themselves if they are effective. I think this is more a means of providing some psychological assistance to the Gulf Arabs more than anything else. Iran is clearly a threat to their sovereignty.

But Iran seems to have made the best bet. It was very hard for US pilots to find Iraq's mobile scud missile launchers in the Gulf War. Hardened/civilian-shield protected missiles or even more mobile ones present tough challenges.

Particularly when much of the US leadership class is perfectly fine with Ahmadnutjob prancing around at Ground Zero. Iran has every reason to believe that they can attack with impunity because the West lacks will.

Actually, Jim, the Iranian massing of ballistic and cruise missiles mirrors the old Soviet (and to an extent, American) arms strategy of deterence. The idea is to make a Western airstrike against Iran too destructive, in terms of potential hits against US assets and Gulf nations, both economic and military.

BTW: Iran was not decisively beaten by the USN strike against Iranian Naval assets. Rather, Iran conceded to a ceasefire, which Sadaam had been desperately offering since 1980. The military outcome was a stalemate. However, it should be pointed out that since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran's old war aims from the Iran-Iraq War have been realized: the removal of Hussein from power and the installation of a Shia dominated government in Iraq.

I don't consider myself a "shill" for Iran, Jim.

The current regime doesn't seem any worse to me that our actual "proxy" the Shah was, though.

Our nominal "allies" in the region, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan seem to be supplying the bulk of the money and troops to Islamic fundamentalist activities, yet because they are our "allies" we can't do anything about it.

We even sell the top of the line weaponry.

Why?

In #20, alphie at last raises a substantive point. I wondered if it could be done. It's a good question. The neocons have been asking it for a while.

RE: Iran's relative capabilities and its military strategy, I would strongly suggest he actually check out some information on the topic, rather than just regurgitating "the enemy of my enemy (USA) is my friend lines" without thinking a lot. Doing it right would have useful benefits in terms of understanding the current world environment and how folks play. Up to alphie whether he prefer that to crude propaganda.

Speaking of which... for those interested in the truth, Iraq was a long-standing Soviet ally when it invaded Iran, and to a lesser extent a French ally. Their weapons, from small arms right up to tanks and airplanes, were (and still largely are) of that origin - as are their foreign debts. America's contribution to that war consisted of keeping the waterway open to all oil tankers despite Iranian attacks, providing satellite and radar intelligence to Iraq when it seemed as if they might lose, and credits for grain shipments. And, as I recall, helping the Iranians pick up spare parts for their weapons, courtesy of one Ollie North. Great ally, there.

But of course, that was another decade's propaganda line, no point remembering it now if it contradicts our latest one. Right?

On to strictly defense stuff.

Israel flies the F-16I Soufa ("Storm"), a 2-seat version which is modified to emphasize strike capabilities and contains a lot of Israeli equipment inside. Not the F-16L. Defense folks are picky about that sort of thing - and since getting it wrong can mean a very different opponent, I can understand the pickiness.

Good one to note that Iran does still fly F-14 Tomcats - in fact, they are the last country to do so. The F-14s performed very well in the Iran-Iraq war; the Iraqis lack of success might be intuited from the fact that one of the uses they made of American radar data was to keep their planes out of the air when Iranian F-14s were flying (thanks to American spare parts, via Ollie North). Something about being blown up by long-range Phoenix missiles from a plane so far away you can't even see it on radar. The Iranians have been rather ingenious at maintaining an aircraft that has always been a maintenance hog, and doing it without any support; the fact that even some of them are still flying is impressive.

Meanwhile, davod is simply wrong. Sneers need a stronger factual basis, and Eurofighter is an excellent aircraft by all professional accounts - it has decisively beaten US aircraft like the F-15 in exercises.

Its European core partnership countries are reconsidering their 3rd tranche purchases for the same reason they're selling off their tanks by the thousands: their defense budgets are driving toward figures under 2% of GDP, and in some cases approaching 1% very closely. Export sales, meanwhile, have been hampered by the Europeans' initial reluctance to put ground attack features into the initial builds. The rest of the world, of course, moves to a rather different drummer; now Eurofighter is finally catching up.

Of course, just because you buy the Ferrari doesn't make you a race course driver...

Iraq was a long-standing Soviet ally when it invaded Iran, and to a lesser extent a French ally. Their weapons, from small arms right up to tanks and airplanes, were (and still largely are) of that origin - as are their foreign debts. America's contribution to that war consisted of keeping the waterway open to all oil tankers despite Iranian attacks, providing satellite and radar intelligence to Iraq when it seemed as if they might lose, and credits for grain shipments.

We co-signed various loans for Saddam. That is, we paid for his war. When he defaulted on the loans it was our responsibility to pay them.

We supplied Saddam with expertise in making and using chemical weapons, though many of the factories, raw materials, and delivery systems were bought elsewhere. Some of our photo intelligence was used to refine Saddam's chemical tactics.

There's reason to think that Saddam thought we would let him become a US client, somewhat replacing iran. When we had iran we didn't need iraq -- so he had no better choice than to go with the USSR. When we didn't have iran, maybe we'd want iraq. We gave various signs of that -- cosigned loans, vitally important intelligence aid, some weapons, friendly diplomatic overtures, etc. As it turned out we backed off. Was it that Saddam's human rights violations were harder to swallow than the Shah's had been? Was it that we didn't really need bases in iraq? Was it that Saddam made a more useful enemy than friend? Did Iran/Contra poison the deal? Maybe sometime in the next 30 years or so the records will be declassified.

Photo intelligence was supplied to show Saddam military targets. When the intelligence wasn't supplied Saddam simply targetted villages found on his Rand McNally.

Joe Katzman:

Thanks for the correction (F16I). I appreciate that.

J Thomas:
It should be realized that one of the main reasons the Iranians conceded to a stalemate in 1988 was the growing Americanization of the Iran-Iraq War. As to the real reason for the outbreak of hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait in the First Gulf War, there was the situation over repayment of Iraq's war debt. Iraq's economy (and Iran's, too) was in a shambles. Repayment of debt was impossible. Really, the only viable recourse for Iraq was a war. At least, that's how Sadaam saw it.

Joe Katzman:
Although the trend of multi-role fighter aircraft has gained considerable acceptance, the spectacular success of an air-superiority fighter in a minor power conflict, that was the Iran-Iraq War, deserves special attention. True, Iran like the USN made attempts at turning their Tomcats into bombers. But I believe the Iranians may have done so for a different reason. In their case, they may have been short of serviceable, high-performance fighter bombers, while in the US Navy case, total air supremacy had been achieved and there was no need for the original intended role of the F14. It should also be noted that there are signs of a demand for export air superiority fighters, as in the case of rumored negotiations of F22 sales to Japan, which is also looked upon as a form of economic assistance to specific US weapons contractors.