Faced with Israel, Iran wants to triple its military spending

Faced with Israel, Iran wants to triple its military spending

2024-10-29 14:34:00

The Iranian government wants to increase its military budget, and not just a little. He proposed to Parliament “a significant increase of more than 200% in the country’s military budget”its spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani, said on Tuesday. Without, however, specifying the concrete amount that would be allocated. This increase would concern the next Iranian fiscal year, which will begin on March 21, 2025.

In detail, most of next year’s military budget would be intended for the Revolutionary Guards. As a reminder, this is the country’s powerful ideological army, responsible for defending the regime of the Islamic Republic, according to the official Irna agency. The other part of the budget would be divided between the General Staff of the armed forces and the regular army.

The main lines of this budget for the Iranian fiscal year 2025-2026 were approved this Tuesday by the Iranian Parliament. However, there is still one step left for this new envelope to be fully validated. MEPs will have to formally agree to the final text during a vote scheduled for March 2025.

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Already in 2024, the Iranian authorities had not disclosed the amount of their defense budget. The figures available go back to the previous year and are those of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). According to this reference body on the subject, Iran’s military spending in 2023 amounted to some 10.3 billion dollars (9.5 billion euros). A figure that does not include spending on the Revolutionary Guards.

The tone rises with Israel

This decision by the Iranian government is closely linked to the explosive context in the Middle East. Israel publicly announced on Saturday that it had attacked Iran, its sworn enemy. This is the first time that the Jewish state has officially recognized it. He said he had targeted Iranian military targets.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN assured that his country only defended itself after the“brutal attack” from October 1. Israel accuses Iran of having launched missile attacks against it that day. “We promised that their actions would not go unanswered” and Israel a “kept his promises”recalled Danny Danon.

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“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to respond to this act of aggression whenever it chooses,” Iranian Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, warned Monday during a meeting of the UN Security Council convened after these strikes.

The ambassador, however, assured ” always “ favor the “diplomacy to resolve regional problems”. Which recent events tend to contradict. Because Iran had justified its own strikes on October 1 as a response to Israeli bombings at the end of September in Lebanon. The latter cost the lives of an Iranian general and the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, a movement that Iran supports financially and militarily. Iranian officials also spoke of another revenge. That of the assassination on their territory, attributed to Israel, of Ismaïl Haniyeh. The latter was then leader of Hamas, the Palestinian movement at war in Gaza against the Israeli army and also supported by Iran.

Ever-increasing fears of an expansion of the conflict

Israel and Iran have accused each other of threatening peace in the Middle East, which is precisely what the international community fears. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “deeply concerned about the continued escalation in the Middle East.” And reiterated on Monday his call to all parties to “prevent all-out regional war”.

“The dangerous cycle of attacks and reprisals risks provoking a further expansion of the regional conflict,” also alerted the European Union.

The United States, for its part, has once again joined forces with its ally Israel. “Our message to Iran remains clear: if it opts for further aggressive actions against Israel or American personnel in the region, there will be serious consequences. We will not hesitate to act in self-defense,” warned American Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. She nevertheless assured that Washington wanted to avoid any “new escalation” in the region.

On the markets, oil prices rose slightly on Tuesday, after having plunged the day before. Some traders are considering the possibility that Israel’s recent strikes on Iran “mark the start of a broader campaign”, explains Stephen Innes, analyst at SPI Asset Management. But on the other hand, “Israel’s retaliation was more moderate and proportionate than the markets feared” because they spared oil infrastructure, said his counterpart at Mirabaud, John Plassard. “Which gives hope for a further de-escalation of the regional conflict”, he believes.

Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM, is particularly concerned about a renewed tension between the Hebrew state and Tehran “after the American elections” next week.