- 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 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.
- Scope
- Structure, role, lineage and links. 4 subordinate records published.
- Subordination
- Subordination confirmed
- Sources
- 2 on the record
- Record state
- Partial
- Broad area of activity
- Iran's frontiers, with the historical weight on the west and south-west
- Notable history
- The Artesh ground force is the army the revolution inherited and kept: a conscript-heavy conventional force organised, in the compiled references, into four armoured divisions, six infantry divisions and two mobile-assault divisions with independent brigades beside them, under regional headquarters facing the north-west, west, south-west, north-east and south-east. Its constitutional task is territorial defence, and its history is the eight-year war with Iraq, whose southern front its Khuzestan armoured division held. It runs its own helicopter arm and its own airborne special forces, both of which predate the revolution. This atlas authors the three formations that touch the module's system — the Gulf-coast armoured division, the commando division and the airborne brigade — and names the rest here rather than as records.
- Strengths
- Mass, institutional depth and a professional officer corps with a conventional war behind it; the only Iranian service organised to hold ground against a state opponent.
- Limitations
- Equipment largely of the 1970s and its reverse-engineered successors, constrained by four decades of sanctions; a structure built for a war the current one does not resemble; and a permanent duplication with the Guard's ground force that consumes resources without adding capability. Nothing here describes strength, holdings, positions or readiness, and the formation list above is compiled rather than published by Iran.
Subordinate formations
92nd Armoured DivisionDivision · subordination reported23rd Takavar DivisionDivision · subordination reported65th Airborne Special Forces BrigadeSpecial unit · subordination reportedArtesh Army AviationCommand · subordination reported
Rows are layout only — position and order carry no hierarchy, importance, sequence or strength. Every record shown is an immediate subordinate of the selected organisation.
Sensitivity: Public · structural Confidence: Moderate Sources: Iranian armed-forces institutional reference · IISS Military Balance↗ Methodology Corrections
Assessed as of — 2026-09 Last reviewed — 2026-09-09
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