Context, not targeting. This atlas describes structure and history. It deliberately excludes current locations, live strength, unit movements and anything operationally sensitive — the content model has no fields for them. Branch depth reflects what can be established from public sources, not the size, capability or importance of a force: a thin branch means a state publishes little, and record counts are never a measure of strength.
82 reviewed profiles of 83 records
82 under review. 1 further records are structural stubs. Confidence, subordination and sources are inside each record.
Iran · State military
Iran's conventional armed forces, inherited from the imperial military and constitutionally tasked with defending the country's territory — one of three pillars answering to the Supreme Leader, not a service of a unified military.
Joint
Iran · Branch
The conventional land force of the Artesh — the largest single Iranian service by manpower, organised in armoured, infantry and mobile-assault divisions with its own aviation and airborne special forces, and the other half of a country that runs two ground armies.
Land · under Artesh
Iran · Division
The Artesh armoured division of Khuzestan, seated at Ahvaz — the formation that held the southern front in the war with Iraq and that sits on the oil-producing province at the head of the Gulf.
Land · under Artesh Ground Forces
Iran · Division
The Artesh's commando division — the ground force's principal deployable light formation, activated in its present form in 1979 on the lineage of the imperial army's commando and airborne units, reorganised in the 2010s as a mobile assault division, and the unit compiled accounts associate with the Artesh's rapid-reaction role.
Land · under Artesh Ground Forces
Iran · Special unit
The Artesh's airborne special-forces brigade, known by its Persian acronym NOHED — the oldest special-operations formation in Iran, raised in 1959 and made an independent brigade in 1991 from the 23rd Commando Division; the Artesh counterpart of the Guard's Saberin brigade, and the Artesh formation Iran acknowledged deploying to Syria.
Special operations · under Artesh Ground Forces
Iran · Command
The Artesh ground force's helicopter arm — a large, ageing rotary fleet bought in the 1970s and kept flying by domestic overhaul, organised as a command of the Ground Forces rather than of the Air Force, on a lineage that began as an aviation battalion of the imperial army in 1962.
Air · under Artesh Ground Forces
Iran · Branch
Iran's conventional air arm — the fixed-wing service, largely equipped with pre-1979 and reverse-engineered aircraft, and the force whose weakness against a modern air campaign has defined both the 2025 and 2026 wars.
Air · under Artesh
Iran · Branch
Iran's conventional navy — frigates, corvettes and submarines whose assigned waters are the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and beyond, and which is a different institution from the Revolutionary Guard's Gulf naval force.
Naval · under Artesh
Iran · Command
The conventional navy's principal district and its headquarters port, at Bandar Abbas — co-located with the Guard Navy's own first district, which is the two-navy overlap in a single place.
Naval · under Artesh Navy
Iran · Command
The conventional navy's district on the Gulf of Oman side of the strait, headquartered at Jask — the port at the end of the Goreh–Jask pipeline, and the place where the outward-facing half of the two-navy structure begins.
Naval · under Artesh Navy
Iran · Command
The conventional navy's Makran-coast district, headquartered at Konarak near Chabahar — the district with responsibility over the Gulf of Oman and the seat from which Iran's long-range naval deployments have sailed.
Naval · under Artesh Navy
Iran · Command
The conventional navy's Caspian Sea district, headquartered at Bandar Anzali — a training-oriented command on a closed sea shared with Russia and three other littoral states, and the one Iranian naval district that is not about the Gulf.
Naval · under Artesh Navy
Iran · Branch
Iran's national air-defence service, separated from the air force in 2008 — and, through the Khatam al-Anbiya air-defence headquarters, the one function in which the Artesh and the Revolutionary Guard are documented to operate together.
Air · under Artesh
Iran · State military
The military created to defend the revolution rather than the territory — a second armed force with its own ground, naval and aerospace services, holding the missile programme and the external portfolio, and answering to the Supreme Leader in parallel with the Artesh.
Joint
Iran · Branch
The Guard's land force — territorial rather than divisional since 2008, organised through provincial corps under regional headquarters, and the parallel army that makes Iran a country with two ground forces.
Land · under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran · Corps
The territorial layer of the Guard's ground force — a corps for each province, created in 2008 when the Basij's district military structure was merged into the Ground Forces, sitting under regional headquarters and commanding the Guard's local military, security and mobilisation formations.
Land · under IRGC Ground Forces
Iran · Special unit
The Guard ground force's special-operations brigade — established under Mohammad Ali Jafari, by most accounts in 2000, as the Guard's counterpart to the Artesh's airborne special forces; associated in public reporting with operations in the Kurdish north-west and the Baluch south-east, and deployed to Syria from 2015, where its losses were announced at home.
Special operations · under IRGC Ground Forces
Iran · Branch
The Revolutionary Guard's naval service and Iran's Gulf-facing navy — small craft, missiles and asymmetric methods rather than warships, and the institution most closely associated with pressure on the Strait of Hormuz.
Naval · under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran · Command
The Guard Navy's Hormuz district — seated at Bandar Abbas beside the Artesh Navy's own first district, and the regional command whose area is the strait itself.
Naval · under IRGC Navy
Iran · Command
The Guard Navy's central-Gulf district, seated at Bushehr — the coast that faces the Saudi and Bahraini shore across the narrowest part of the Gulf, and the province that hosts Iran's nuclear power plant.
Naval · under IRGC Navy
Iran · Command
The Guard Navy's northern-Gulf district, seated at Bandar Mahshahr near the Iraqi border — the shallow head of the Gulf where Iran's, Iraq's and Kuwait's waters and oil terminals meet.
Naval · under IRGC Navy
Iran · Command
The Guard Navy's district for the South Pars coast, seated at Asaluyeh — the seat of the world's largest gas field's onshore complex and of the shore facing Qatar's Ras Laffan across the shared reservoir.
Naval · under IRGC Navy
Iran · Command
The Guard Navy's district for the western Hormozgan coast, seated at Bandar Lengeh — the shore nearest the three islands Iran took control of in 1971 and the Emirati coast beyond them.
Naval · under IRGC Navy
Iran · Branch
The service that holds Iran's ballistic missile and drone programmes — the organisation behind the retaliation of both wars, and the one whose entire senior leadership was killed in a single strike in June 2025.
Air · under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran · Command
The surface-to-surface missile component of the Aerospace Force — the organisation that fired the retaliation of June 2025 and of the war that began in February 2026, and whose commanders were killed in the opening strike of the first and replaced before the second.
Air · under IRGC Aerospace Force
Iran · Command
The Aerospace Force's unmanned-aircraft component — the organisation behind the long-range one-way attack drones that were the other half of every Iranian salvo, and whose commander was killed with the Aerospace Force's leadership in June 2025.
Unmanned · under IRGC Aerospace Force
Iran · Branch
The Revolutionary Guard's external service — the institution through which Iran's relationships with armed partners beyond its borders are run, and the organisational reason those relationships are a military portfolio rather than a diplomatic one.
Special operations · under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran · Branch
The Revolutionary Guard's volunteer mass force — a paramilitary mobilisation organisation with a presence in every province, folded into the Guard's ground structure since 2008 and the institution through which the Guard's reach becomes local.
Interior / security · under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran · Branch
The Revolutionary Guard's own intelligence service, established as a separate organisation in 2009 beside the Ministry of Intelligence — the body whose counter-intelligence failures the leadership strikes of 2025 and 2026 exposed, and whose remit this module records only at the level of its existence.
Joint · under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran · Interior forces
Iran's national police and internal-security force — the third of the three branches answering to the Supreme Leader, and the pillar most accounts of the Iranian military leave out entirely.
Interior / security
Iran · State military
The body between the Supreme Leader and Iran's three military pillars — a general staff whose mandate is planning, coordination and integration, and which this atlas deliberately does not draw as the commander of the forces it coordinates.
Joint
Iran · Branch
Iran's joint operational headquarters — described by the US government as responsible for operational command and control across both armed forces, and the voice that announces Iran's wartime operations; its public record shows it speaking for the Artesh and the Revolutionary Guard, not tasking either.
Joint · under Armed Forces General Staff
Iran · Branch
Iran's national air-defence command — formed in 1992 to coordinate the two militaries' air defences, given full command of the Artesh air-defence units in 2008, and always led by an Artesh officer; the one place where joint command across the Artesh–Guard divide is documented to work.
Air · under Armed Forces General Staff
Iran · Institution
The executive-branch ministry that administers, funds and procures for all of Iran's armed forces and owns the defence-industrial conglomerates — the organisation that makes the missiles the Guard fires, and the one whose designations carry most of the arms sanctions.
Joint
Iran · Institution
The defence ministry's missile-industry conglomerate — the organisation that develops and produces Iran's ballistic missiles for the Aerospace Force, the most sanctioned industrial body in the Iranian system, and a target set in both wars.
Joint · under Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics
Gulf Arab states · State military
The Ministry of Defence's five services — land, air, naval, air defence and strategic missile forces — and only one half of the Saudi military structure, which runs a second armed force under a separate ministry.
Joint
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The kingdom's conventional army under the Ministry of Defence — armoured and mechanised brigades on the northern and eastern frontiers and the force that carried the ground side of the Yemen campaign; in this module a service without a documented role, authored so the Saudi structure is complete rather than because the war reached it.
Land · under Saudi Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The kingdom's navy, split by geography into two fleets on two seas — an Eastern Fleet on the Gulf at Jubail and a Western Fleet on the Red Sea at Jeddah — because Saudi Arabia is the one Gulf producer whose export system has an outlet on each.
Naval · under Saudi Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Fleet
The Saudi navy's Gulf fleet, headquartered at the King Abdulaziz Naval Base at Jubail — the fleet on the sea that Ras Tanura, Abqaiq's outlet and the offshore fields depend on, and the one facing the Iranian coast.
Naval · under Royal Saudi Naval Forces
Gulf Arab states · Fleet
The Saudi navy's Red Sea fleet, headquartered at the King Faisal Naval Base at Jeddah — the heavier of the two fleets, on the sea that carries the kingdom's alternative to Hormuz and that the Houthi blockade of July 2026 contested at its southern outlet.
Naval · under Royal Saudi Naval Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The kingdom's air arm — the most capable Gulf Arab air force by equipment and the service through which Saudi Arabia has absorbed a decade of operational experience against missiles and drones.
Air · under Saudi Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
A separate air-defence service rather than an air-force command — the institution that owns the kingdom's ground-based air and missile defence, and the reason Saudi air defence is organisationally distinct from Saudi air power.
Air · under Saudi Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The fifth Saudi service — a strategic missile force built in the 1980s around Chinese intermediate-range missiles, the kingdom's only long-range strike instrument and the one Gulf Arab organisation whose existence mirrors the Iranian force it was created to balance.
Air · under Saudi Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · State military
A full armed force under its own Ministry of National Guard, outside the Ministry of Defence entirely — the second pillar of a deliberately divided Saudi military structure, not another service of the first.
Land
Gulf Arab states · State military
A single unified federal military rather than seven emirate forces — and, since February 2026, the armed forces of the most heavily attacked state in the Gulf.
Joint
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The federation's army — the largest Emirati service, equipped with French armour and Russian infantry vehicles, and the force that gave the Emirates the expeditionary record in Yemen that no other Gulf Arab army has.
Land · under UAE Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The federation's navy — a corvette-and-patrol force on two coasts, the Gulf and Fujairah's Gulf of Oman shore, which together are the maritime shape of the Emirati bypass: a state that exports from both sides of the strait it cannot control.
Naval · under UAE Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
A single service holding both air power and ground-based air defence — the organisation carrying the continuous defensive burden of the most heavily attacked state in the Gulf.
Air · under UAE Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The federation's elite formation — a combined-arms guard command built with foreign advisers from 2011 that carried the sharp end of the Emirati Yemen campaign, and the Gulf's clearest example of a small state investing in a deployable professional force rather than in mass.
Special operations · under UAE Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · State military
A small national military in a state whose security rests mainly on hosting others — and which nonetheless owns the air-defence function protecting the most structurally exposed energy infrastructure in the system.
Joint
Gulf Arab states · Branch
Qatar's air arm — three modern fighter types bought in a decade after the 2017 blockade, and the service that owns the Patriot batteries defending the Ras Laffan complex.
Air · under Qatar Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
Qatar's navy — a new fleet of Italian-built corvettes and patrol vessels delivered through the 2020s, on the coast whose only significant fact is the gas complex and the tanker traffic that leaves it.
Naval · under Qatar Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · State military
The smallest national military of the six, in the state that hosts the American naval command for the region — an arrangement in which the host's own forces are not the main military fact about the country.
Joint
Gulf Arab states · Branch
Bahrain's navy — a frigate-and-patrol force sharing Manama's harbour with the American Fifth Fleet and the coalition headquarters, and the Gulf navy most continuously embedded in multinational maritime operations.
Naval · under Bahrain Defence Force
Gulf Arab states · State military
The military of a state that has been invaded once inside living memory and has organised its security around external guarantees ever since — named in Resolution 2817 among the Gulf states attacked in the current war.
Joint
Gulf Arab states · Branch
Kuwait's air arm and, through its air-defence command, the owner of the Patriot batteries the state reported engaging drones and missiles on 1–2 September 2026 — the one Kuwaiti force activity this module's sources name.
Air · under Kuwait Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · State military
The military of the one Gulf state that is a Hormuz co-riparian and not a party to anyone's camp — a force whose relevance here is the strait it borders and the neutrality its government has spent decades protecting.
Joint
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The Sultanate's navy — a corvette-and-patrol force on the Gulf of Oman and the Musandam peninsula, the only Arab navy that is a co-riparian of the Strait of Hormuz, and a service whose defining task is a strait it shares with Iran and a neutrality it is built to protect.
Naval · under Sultan's Armed Forces
Gulf Arab states · Grouping · not a command
A navigation grouping and an institution, not a command over forces: the GCC's joint military body in Riyadh, whose member states' forces each remain under their own national command — a distinction the current war has made visible.
Joint
External powers · External
The American combatant command whose area covers Iran and the Gulf — the institution that has conducted the United States' war since February 2026, and the correct US command for this system rather than any other theatre's.
Joint
External powers · Branch
CENTCOM's naval component and the US Fifth Fleet under one commander in Bahrain — the American maritime authority in the Gulf, and the same officer who commands the multinational partnership that is not part of the war.
Naval · under US Central Command
External powers · Task force
The Fifth Fleet's mine-countermeasures task force, based at Bahrain — the organisation whose job is the one Iranian capability most discussed and least used, and the reason the strait's mine threat is a matter of insurance rather than of blocked water.
Naval · under US Naval Forces Central Command / Fifth Fleet
External powers · Task force
The Fifth Fleet's unmanned-systems task force, established at Bahrain in 2021 — the first of its kind in the US Navy, built to put unmanned surface and aerial vessels across the Gulf's approaches, and the one genuinely new organisation in the region's naval architecture.
Unmanned · under US Naval Forces Central Command / Fifth Fleet
External powers · Branch
CENTCOM's air component — the command that has flown the American air campaign against Iran since February 2026 from air expeditionary wings on Gulf bases, with its forward headquarters at Al Udeid in Qatar.
Air · under US Central Command
External powers · Wing
The air expeditionary wing at Al Udeid in Qatar — the largest American air base in the region, home to the combined air operations centre and to CENTCOM's forward headquarters, and the organisational form of the Qatari basing relationship.
Air · under US Air Forces Central
External powers · Wing
The air expeditionary wing at Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates — the base from which American fighters, early-warning and reconnaissance aircraft operate over the Gulf, and the organisational form of the Emirati basing relationship in the most heavily attacked state in the region.
Air · under US Air Forces Central
External powers · Branch
CENTCOM's land component — the command that holds the Army's air and missile defence units in the theatre and runs its forward headquarters from Kuwait, and therefore the American organisation behind the Patriot and THAAD batteries that stand beside the Gulf states' own.
Land · under US Central Command
External powers · External
A 47-nation maritime partnership headquartered in Bahrain, running five combined task forces against illicit non-state activity — commanded by the American Fifth Fleet commander, and not a party to the war he is also fighting.
Naval
External powers · Task force
The Combined Maritime Forces' task force for the Gulf itself — the multinational security structure inside the water this module is about, commanded in rotation by Gulf states' own officers, and by mandate concerned with non-state activity rather than with the war.
Naval · under Combined Maritime Forces
External powers · Task force
The Combined Maritime Forces' Red Sea task force, created in 2022 — the coalition structure on the sea that carries Saudi Arabia's alternative to Hormuz, and the one whose water the Houthi blockade of July 2026 contested.
Naval · under Combined Maritime Forces
External powers · External
The Hormuz-specific coalition — formed in July 2019 after the tanker attacks of that summer, headquartered in Bahrain, with an operational arm called Coalition Task Force Sentinel and a remit that, unlike the wider maritime coalition's, names the strait and the threat to merchant shipping directly.
Naval
External powers · External
The European Union's defensive naval operation for freedom of navigation, launched in February 2024 against the Houthi campaign on shipping — mandated to February 2027, widened in 2026 to monitor the Strait of Hormuz, and the only military structure in this module that answers to Brussels.
Naval
External powers · External
The Turkish military presence in Qatar — a joint force command established under the 2014 defence agreement and expanded during the 2017 blockade, the only standing non-Western external force in a Gulf Cooperation Council state, and the structure Türkiye's Gulf role rested on before Makkah.
Joint
External powers · External
Israel's unified military — a single force with no separate national guard or revolutionary parallel, and the organisation that opened both the June 2025 war and the war that began in February 2026.
Joint
External powers · Branch
Israel's air arm and the service that opened both wars — the organisation that struck Iran at extreme range in June 2025 and again from February 2026, and that also owns the multi-layered missile defence through its air-defence array.
Air · under Israel Defense Forces
External powers · Command
The air force's ground-based air and missile defence formation — the organisation that operates the multi-layered shield of Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow, and that engaged the Iranian retaliation of both wars.
Air · under Israeli Air Force
External powers · Branch
Israel's naval service — a small, modern force whose relevance to this system is its submarine flotilla, the German-built boats that give Israel a survivable long-range strike capability and that surfaced deliberately in the Red Sea off Eilat in July 2026.
Naval · under Israel Defense Forces
External powers · Flotilla
The Israeli navy's submarine flotilla at Haifa — six German-built Dolphin-class boats, the sixth and largest, INS Drakon, received at Haifa on 24 September 2026 — widely assessed to carry a sea-based strategic capability that Israel neither confirms nor denies.
Naval · under Israeli Navy
External powers · Branch
The IDF's intelligence directorate — the organisation behind the leadership targeting that opened both wars, and the reason the Israeli campaign against Iran is assessed as an intelligence achievement before it is assessed as an air campaign.
Joint · under Israel Defense Forces
External powers · Armed movement
The military of the Houthi authority in Sanaa — an insurgent movement that inherited most of the Yemeni state's arsenal in 2014 and has since become a conventionalised force with its own missile, drone and coastal components, organised in seven military regions, and the one non-state actor in this module able to close a chokepoint.
Volunteer / irregular
External powers · Command
The movement's missile and unmanned-aircraft component — ballistic and cruise missiles of Iranian lineage and domestic assembly, and the one-way attack drones fired at shipping, Saudi Arabia and Israel, organised as a specialised force rather than as an infantry army's artillery.
Air · under Houthi armed forces
External powers · Command
The movement's naval and coastal-defence component — anti-ship missiles, sea mines, small fast craft and unmanned surface vessels on the Red Sea coast, the instrument of the campaign against shipping and of the July 2026 blockade of Saudi-bound traffic at Bab el-Mandeb.
Naval · under Houthi armed forces
Gulf Arab states · Branch
The federation's rotary-wing and army-aviation service, held as a separate joint command rather than inside the army or the air force — the attack and transport helicopter force, with the army's and navy's fixed-wing support aircraft, that gave the Emirati Yemen campaign its mobility; the UAE publishes no structure for it, and its establishment date is not on the official record read for this pass.
Air · under UAE Armed Forces
No formations match the current filters.
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