Amwaj:

In late August, Iran’s defense minister made a startling claim: the Islamic Republic has set up arms manufacturing facilities abroad. Aziz Nasirzadeh said Tehran had built “weapons factories in some countries” that “will likely be officially opened and announced in the near future.” The coy comments were notably made less than two months after Israel’s 12-day war on Iran, which degraded key defense capabilities.

Tehran is well known to have helped its regional allies establish local and largely self-sufficient capabilities to manufacture drones and missiles. This most notably applies to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Ansarullah movement in Yemen—better known as the Houthis—and Shiite groups in Iraq. In this context, Nasirzadeh’s comments have sparked speculation about the kind of supply lines that the Islamic Republic is envisioning, particularly as a renewed confrontation with Israel may be on the horizon.

Capacity-building abroad

Ali Hajizadeh, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Aerospace Force who was assassinated by Israel in June, once summed up the Islamic Republic’s philosophy of empowering its allies by referencing the old proverb, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Of course, Nasirzadeh’s comments may not refer to weapons manufacturing and technology transfers outsourced to the non-state actors that make up the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’. After all, the Islamic Republic has also established weapons factories in various countries in cooperation with governments. 

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