[custom_adv] Majid Faridfar is an actor, known for The Round Mill (1967), Aftab mahtab (1970) and The Red Alert (1970). [custom_adv] By September 1980, the government had purged 12,000 army officers. These purges resulted in a drastic decline in the Iranian military's operational capacities. Their regular army (which, in 1978, was considered the world's fifth most powerful) had been badly weakened. The desertion rate had reached 60%, and the officer corps was devastated. [custom_adv] The most highly skilled soldiers and aviators were exiled, imprisoned, or executed. Throughout the war, Iran never managed to fully recover from this flight of human capital. [custom_adv] Continuous sanctions prevented Iran from acquiring many heavy weapons, such as tanks and aircraft. When the invasion occurred, many pilots and officers were released from prison, or had their executions commuted to combat the Iraqis. [custom_adv] In addition, many junior officers were promoted to generals, resulting in the army being more integrated as a part of the regime by the war's end, as it is today.Iran still had at least 1,000 operational tanks and several hundred functional aircraft, and could cannibalize equipment to procure spare parts. [custom_adv] Meanwhile, a new paramilitary organisation gained prominence in Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (often shortened to Revolutionary Guards, and known in Iran as the Sepah-e-Pasdaran).
