Iranian military commanders are being widely replaced, with poor air defense performance cited as the main culprit, and future focus shifting to purchasing Chinese products!
According to Iranian media reports, following the recent round of conflicts with Israel, Iran has begun openly discussing the restructuring and reorganization of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The report states that the IRGC's Aerospace Force’s air defense units will undergo major reforms: on one hand, there will be large-scale personnel replacements, with many commanders retiring and being succeeded by younger generations.
On the other hand, there will be a complete shift in air defense system construction philosophy—Iran’s domestically developed third-generation "Khordad" series air defense systems performed poorly during the Ramadan War. As a result, the IRGC plans to abandon its full-scale domestic air defense weaponry strategy and instead turn to importing air defense systems, with Russia as the primary supplier and China as a potential key procurement target.
By late February 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched a massive joint aerial assault. The Israeli Defense Forces claimed to have killed 40 Iranian military commanders, asserting that Iran’s “defense leadership has been wiped out.” Core commanders such as Iran’s Armed Forces Chief of Staff Musavi and former IRGC Commander Pakpour were successively killed. Ali Hajizadeh, former commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, also died during clashes in June 2025. In just a few months, Iran’s military command structure suffered a massive vacuum.
The air defense systems failed to hold up either. During the U.S.-Israel joint airstrikes at the end of February 2026, Iran’s overall air defense performance was weak. Key military and energy facilities around Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and other locations were precisely targeted. S-300 missile sites were destroyed early in the attack, while Bavar-373 systems recorded launches but no verifiable successful intercepts were confirmed.
The Khordad-15 is Iran’s most advanced regional air defense system, only entering service in 2024 and already deployed in one missile battery by 2025. Iranian officials once claimed it could detect F-35 aircraft and intercept targets within 120 kilometers. However, in actual combat, this system proved incapable of stopping the U.S.-Israel air raids.
Its phased-array radar performance is questionable, and its guidance systems largely rely on reverse-engineered technology from U.S.-made “Standard-1” missiles. It lacks strong resistance to saturation attacks. More critically, facing combined electronic jamming from stealthy F-35I fighter jets and EA-18G electronic warfare aircraft, Iran’s air defense systems fell into a state of “unable to see, unable to calculate, unable to hit.”
Iran’s catastrophic failure in air defense has opened a door for Chinese defense exports. Iranian military commentators have already publicly stated that Iran’s biggest strategic mistake was refusing to purchase advanced weapons from China. As Iran abandons its domestic production path and fully shifts toward imports, Chinese HQ-series surface-to-air missiles, early warning radars, and command and control systems are expected to enter Iran’s procurement list.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1869583054328908/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.