Formations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Artesh's land service — authored to keep Iran's dual structure legible, because the Revolutionary Guard fields a parallel ground force of its own; no ground campaign in this war has given it a role this module can describe.

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.

The Revolutionary Guard's land service, organised provincially and oriented as much toward internal control as toward external defence — authored so that Iran's duplicated ground structure is visible rather than implied.

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.

The wartime operational headquarters within the General Staff structure, mandated to plan and coordinate joint operations across the whole armed forces — and the command level whose two successive heads were killed within days of each other in June 2025.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CENTCOM's air component, and the organisational home of the American air campaign against Iran — a command, described at the level a command is described.

The IDF's air arm — the service through which strikes at Iranian range are conducted, authored at institutional level because this module's evidence attributes the strikes to Israel rather than to a named service.