Page 304 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin 301

against rebellious tribesmen or chasing marauders along the Afghan border. Its
unremarkable performance against the guerrillas of Dhufar in the early 1970s
has been referred to already. European military missions have been trying to
train the Persian army since the end of the eighteenth century (and European
adventurers for even longer), without notable success. The reason for failure
lay not so much with the Persian soldier (who was as likely, in any case, to be an
Afghan or a Turcoman) as with his officers, who regarded the profession of

arms primarily as a means of advancing their personal interests and lining their
own pockets, so that the men under their command were treated as mere
objects for exploitation. While this attitude, which obtained up to the end of
the Second World War at least, may have improved of late years, the general
level of efficiency in the Persian army has remained fairly low, due in large
measure to the lack of education and the want of technical competence
throughout its ranks. Little, in short, would appear to have changed since
Talleyrand in February 1807, in the course of persuading Napoleon of the
futility of enlisting Persia in an alliance directed against the British in India,
observed of Persia’s military capacity: ‘La Perse peut lever et entretenir un
assez grand nombre de troupes; mais dans ses armees il y a des hommes et point
de soldats.’
The Persians’ military shortcomings were only underlined by the shah’s
insistence upon equipping his armed forces with the most complex modern
weaponry; for as time went by they became more and not less dependent upon
American and British military advisers and technicians, not merely for training
in the use of the new weaponry but for its actual operation and maintenance as
well. This dependence was particularly marked in the case of the Hawk and
Rapier missile defence systems which the Persian army and air force were

acquiring, and over the introduction of the F-14 fighter into service with the
air force. The installation of the Hawk missile system, one of the most expen­
sive and complicated programmes upon which the Persians had embarked, fell
increasingly behind schedule with each passing month, as a result of delays in
the construction of missile sites, grossly inadequate logistics and a dire short­
age of qualified Persian technicians. Even before the overthrow of the shah cut
the ground from under the programme it had become clear that the system
would never have been able to function without the continued assistance of
American technicians.
It was the same story with the Persian air force, whose real as opposed to
assumed capabilities were very much in doubt. The backbone of the air force
was its American F-4 (Phantom) and F-5 (Tiger) aircraft, of which Persia had
purchased some 360, many of them equipped with missiles. Although
sufficient air crews had been trained to fly these aircraft, there was a serious
shortage of ground crews to service them, with the result that maintenance was
largely carried out by American contractors. The necessity for American

assistance was even more strikingly apparent in the case of the highly complex