Why Iran's Armed Forces Rank Higher Than Israel's Military

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Why Iran's Armed Forces Rank Higher Than Israel's Military
By: Michael Peck of National Interest News - 06-14-20
Re: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/re...ilitary-162671

While GlobalFirepower.com’s formula is opaque, it is likely that the website is using many traditional factors to calculate its scores.

Here's What You Need To Remember: What does all this prove? First, as anyone who peruses defense websites soon learns, rankings of military power are often so arbitrary that they become useless at best and ridiculous at worst. But more important is the arbitrary nature of these indexes, which tend to ignore the conditions that govern military power.

Iran’s armed forces ranked thirteenth in the world, according to GlobalFirepower.com’s 2018 rankings, which apparently combined various statistics to assemble a composite military power rating (0.3131 for Iran, with 0.00 being a perfect score).

Israel ranked sixteenth, with a military power rating of 0.3444. By comparison, the United States ranks Number One, followed by Russia, China, India, France and Britain.

Curiously, Egypt is in twelfth place, ahead of Iran and Israel. Indonesia is fifteenth, ahead of Israel. On the other hand, Israel is ahead of Pakistan (seventeenth place), North Korea (eighteenth place), and Sweden (thirty-first place). Dead last, in 136th place, was Bhutan. The website says it is in the midst of compiling the 2019 military power rankings.

“It was the third year in a row that Israel fell in the site’s ranking, falling one spot from the previous year and down five spots when it ranked 11th in 2016,” noted the Jerusalem Post. “Iran, meanwhile, climbed to 13th in 2018 from 20th in 2017.”

How exactly does GlobalFirepower calculate these scores?

“The finalized Global Firepower ranking utilizes over 55 individual factors to determine a given nation's PowerIndex ('PwrIndx') score,” says the website. “The unique, in-house formula allows for smaller, more technologically-advanced, nations to compete with larger, though lesser-developed, ones. Modifiers (in the form of bonuses and penalties) are applied to further refine the list. A perfect PwrIndex score is 0.0000 which is realistically unattainable in the scope of the GFP formula.”

The website further explains that the scores are adjusted by a variety of modifiers. For example, “ranking does not rely solely on total number of weapons available to any one country but rather focuses on weapon diversity.”

The scores also take into account “First World, Second World, and Third World statuses,” while NATO nations are awarded a “slight bonus due to the theoretical sharing of war-making resources.” Other modifiers include geography, industry, natural resources, manpower and financial strength.”

Some politicians will no doubt be relieved to learn that “current political / military leadership is NOT taken into account.” But most important is the factor that in theory should give Israel a decisive edge over Iran, or at least for the time being.

“Nuclear stockpiles are NOT taken into account but recognized / suspected nuclear powers are given a bonus,” GlobalFirepower says. Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, while Iran has tried to develop them in the past, and may or may not be close to developing them now, depending on whom you ask.

While GlobalFirepower.com’s formula is opaque, it is likely that the website is using many traditional factors to calculate its scores. For example, Iran’s population is listed at 82 million, with potential military manpower of 47 million, while Israel has a population of 8.3 million, of which 3.6 million are available for military service. Iran has almost 100 times Israel’s landmass and much, much more oil. Iran is listed having more than 900,000 active-duty and reserve military personnel versus Israel’s 615,000, though Iran has fewer tanks and aircraft.

What does all this prove? First, as anyone who peruses defense websites soon learns, rankings of military power are often so arbitrary that they become useless at best and ridiculous at worst. But more important is the arbitrary nature of these indexes, which tend to ignore the conditions that govern military power.

For example, while Iran has a larger military, a bigger population and more military manpower, that wouldn’t help much in a conflict with Israel, which doesn’t share a border with Iran, which in turn means that big Iranian armies have nowhere to go (these factors were important in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, where the two nations were adjacent).

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest.

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Personally I feel ranking has little to do without 100% commitment of the people of these lands. Not everyone is a hawk. People are tired of wars and conflicts. They can't understand their governments needs for super weapons - whereas the retaliation of the defending force could be more than five times more destructive. War's don't improve the worlds issues its only the leadership in most cases that wishes to represent its power at any given time.

It's the Have's and Have Not's that are always in play. Ideologies are key factors in many conflicts. Or one has oil the other does not. It seems dominance over others seems to be a sickness in many leader's around the world. It's the "because I can attitude" that is always in play.

Conscription service (sorta like a draft) is never a good policy. You can't make a good fighter if they don't want to be one. Forced labor separates people from their family's to benefit their leader's wishes.

Education is a major key in this world. Many don't get one and that holds them back in their possible position in life. There are many evil things in this world that still exist.

Man's ability to overpower their people tends to lead to rebellion followed by the slaughter of those who do not want to. Cruel and unusual punishments for such is the norm in many countries. Fall out of line and an early demise is in your future - they might kill your family if you have one? They will do anything to break your spirit - this is their mantra.

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