How Iran's Other Army Is Fighting the War

With much attention directed toward the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) role in the conflict launched just over two months ago by the United States and Israel, another military command has steadily increased its participation in Iran’s war effort.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Army-also known as the Artesh-constitutes Iran’s conventional military service and operates in parallel with the IRGC-also known as the Sepah, or Pasdaran. Both services oversee separate ground, aerial and naval branches that collectively fall under the umbrella of the Iranian Armed Forces.

Formally, the IRGC is tasked with safeguarding the integrity of the Islamic Republic and its ideology, while the Artesh is charged with more traditional territorial defense. In practice, the IRGC has consolidated influence both within the country and among allied Axis of Resistance factions across the region, often sidelining the Artesh in terms of resources and responsibilities.

But the Artesh has played an overlooked role in Iran’s defense and even lesser-seen position within the inner working of the Islamic Republic. Its immediate command also remains largely intact, whereas much of the IRGC’s original leadership has been slain in the current conflict and the 12-Day War that preceded it in June.

Then, too, the Artesh took action, marking its first major mobilization in decades, largely through launches of Arash-model drones as the IRGC fired Shahed-family unmanned systems and a variety of missiles in response to Israeli strikes.

Yet, as Shahryar Pasandieh, security analyst and fellow at the University of Toronto’s Bill Graham Center for Contemporary International History, told Newsweek, despite limited capabilities in relation to the IRGC, “the scope of the Artesh's participation in this war has greatly expanded.”

Air, Land and Sea

All three branches of the Artesh have seen combat since the joint U.S.-Israeli war launched against Iran in late February. The confrontation has come at a cost, perhaps most notably in the devastating blows dealt by the U.S. to the Iranian Navy, whose larger surface fleet largely belongs to the Artesh, as opposed to the IRGC Navy’s propensity to rely on smaller, fast-attack craft.

But the Artesh has also dealt some blows of its own.

“Beyond becoming a major target, above all in the naval sphere, Artesh strike drones have been documented in use against targets throughout the region, not just Israel,” Pasandieh said. “The [Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force] appears to have been instructed before the war to attempt daring offensive strikes against targets in the Gulf Arab states.”

Reports indicate at least one such sortie in March, said to be carried out by one of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force’s (IRIAF) 1950s-era, U.S.-built F-5 fighters, managed to penetrate air defenses at the U.S. military’s Camp Buehring in Kuwait in what would be a surprise challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertions of total air superiority.

“Beyond air defense activity, Artesh ground combat units were likely placed on wartime alert throughout the country, not least at the time that an American and Israeli orchestrated Kurdish separatist invasion from Iraq was reportedly on the cards,” Pasandieh said, “or once reports indicated that the United States was considering undertaking ground combat operations along Iran's Persian Gulf coastline and Kharg Island.”

Still, he noted, the Artesh’s war-fighting capacity falls short of the IRGC despite hosting a significantly larger pool of personnel-roughly 400,000 to the IRGC’s estimated 120,000.

“The Artesh's Ground Force, while large in headcount, is very limited in qualitative terms, and non-special forces Artesh personnel are, as a general matter, far less well equipped to engage in ground combat operations against the United States than even their rather modestly equipped IRGC Ground Force counterparts,” Pasandieh said.

“While the Artesh's ground force has also been upgrading its shorter-range (i.e., sub-500-kilometer range) strike capabilities, these similarly pale in comparison to those of the IRGC Ground Force, let alone the IRGC Aerospace Force,” Pasandieh said. “The IRIAF is very poorly equipped on account of being underfunded for decades and operating a low-readiness and highly obsolescent force of combat aircraft.”

Ashkan Hashemipour, Iran analyst at the University of Oxford, depicted the Artesh’s role primarily “defensive,” owing in large part “due to its control of Iran's air defense capabilities.”

“The IRGC, on the other hand, has been playing more of an offensive/escalatory role,” Hashemipour told Newsweek. “The missile and drone attacks on the Gulf countries, the missile strikes on Israel, and the various naval maneuvers to enforce closure of the Strait of Hormuz (mining the strait, swarm tactics, etc.) have all been the work of the IRGC.”

Balance of Power

Beyond the battlefield, both the Artesh and IRGC coexist in an intricate and sometimes unsteady ecosystem of competing domestic forces within Iran.

Managing this equilibrium was a priority throughout the long reign of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until his death in the U.S.-Israeli strikes that opened the current conflict.

Kamran Bokhari, a strategic forecaster and senior resident fellow at the Middle East Policy Council, has long tracked the evolution of Iran’s insider developments. He viewed Khamenei in his later years as having begun to elevate the Artesh as a counterbalance to an increasingly powerful IRGC.

But with Khamenei’s death and the absence of his son and successor, Mojtaba, who has only communicated in written statements since his appointment in early March, war has disrupted this process before it had “matured,” Bokhari said.

“The Guards still control a lot of things, telecommunications, domestic security, the economy, the ballistic missile program, the nuclear program, etc., etc. The Artesh don’t,” Bokhari told Newsweek. “They were still in the early stages of the pathway to gaining power. Now, that has been delayed.”

U.S. and Israeli strikes have also played a direct role. The two most senior Iranian military figures with Artesh backgrounds going into the conflict, Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi and Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh have since been replaced by IRGC figures in the wake of their killings.

Mousavi had only assumed the role in June, following the killing of his predecessor, prominent IRGC figure Major General Mohammad Bagheri. Mousavi’s promotion opened the spot for Major General Amir Hatami to lead the Artesh as Iranian Army commander in chief, a position he continues to hold today, making him perhaps the most senior uniformed military official to survive the conflict thus far.

Still, his clout has been overshadowed by rising IRGC figures, most notably newly named IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi, along with recently appointed Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. Even Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is co-leading negotiations with the U.S. and has been subject to direct overtures from the Trump administration, has an IRGC past.

But with talks apparently on hold and mounting tensions threatening a potential return to fighting, the weight of influence could once again shift, especially, as Bokhari noted, “if the IRGC gets hit harder.”

“Then that creates the space for the Artesh to come in,” he said.

Holding the Line

Whether such a shift is likely, and what it could mean for the broader trajectory of Iran remains subject to deep debate.

Even prior to the war, some analysts had posited that the Artesh, given its more conventional nature, could prove a vehicle for the U.S. and Israel to spur change within the Islamic Republic. Such a move would hold historical weight, as the Iranian Army’s decision to turn on the shah marked the decisive turning point in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ended the monarchy.

In the context of a war launched by foreign powers, however, the Iranian ranks continue to hold strong.

“The problem is, in a state of war, you have to defend the country,” Bokhari said. “You may not be ideologically in tune with the regime, but this is not just a moment for the regime, because it’s not just about regime, it’s about the country.”

“If you are seen as sort of the Iranian nationalist force, that national defense is your prerogative, therefore you have to also defend and then you can’t separate yourself from the Guards in that moment,” Bokhari added. “So, in the current moment, those differences have been sort of set aside.”

Alan Eyre, Middle East Institute diplomatic fellow who previously served on the U.S. negotiating team to secure the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, argued that, on the ideological level, the lines between the Artesh and IRGC have long begun to blur, alongside any hopes to pit one army against another.

“Actually, I don’t think there is much appreciable difference ideologically between the IRGC and Artesh upper leadership,” Eyre told Newsweek.

“There certainly was in the early years of the revolution,” Eyre said, “but that was a long time ago and given that former Supreme Leader Khamenei has been the one making key appointments since 1989, that difference has been eradicated.”

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This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 3:00 AM.