- State affiliation · Iran
- Vigil category device · not official insignia
Identity provenance
State affiliation: Iran.
Vigil category device — drawn from this record’s own domain, echelon and role. Not an official insignia.
In brief
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.
- Scope
- Structure, role, lineage and links. No subordinate records published.
- Subordination
- Subordination reported
- Sources
- 2 on the record
- Record state
- Partial
- Broad area of activity
- Held at the ground force's disposal rather than tied to a regional headquarters, in the compiled accounts; the Iran–Iraq war's northern front is its historical ground. No location is authored.
- Notable history
- The Artesh's special-operations lineage predates the revolution: the imperial army trained its first parachute officers in France in the 1950s and raised an airborne special-forces unit in 1959 that fought in Oman's Dhofar war. The 23rd Commando Division was activated in 1979 as the revolutionary state reorganised what it had inherited, and in the Iran–Iraq war it fought mainly on the northern front, around Sardasht, to keep Iraqi forces from concentrating in the south. In 1991 its airborne brigade was separated and became the independent 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade, leaving the division as the ground force's light, deployable formation; in the 2010s it was redesignated a mobile assault division under a reorganisation that grouped the Artesh's rapid-reaction units. It matters to this module as the Artesh's counterpart to the Guard's commando formations — the conventional service's answer to a role the Guard also claims — and as the origin of the airborne brigade that Iran has acknowledged deploying abroad.
- Strengths
- The oldest special-operations tradition in the country, a division-level light formation the Guard does not match in the compiled accounts, and a war record on a front the Artesh held alone.
- Limitations
- Equipment and mobility of the same vintage as the rest of the Artesh; a role duplicated by the Guard's ground force; and a structure Iran does not publish, so that everything here is compiled. No strength, basing or readiness is authored.
Lineage & institutional history
Successors: 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade
Sensitivity: Public · structural Confidence: Moderate Sources: Iranian armed-forces institutional reference · Established international media reporting Methodology Corrections
Assessed as of — 2026-09 Last reviewed — 2026-09-28
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