![]() ![]() There, production of 800 new tanks would begin in 2018. On March 12th, 2017, it was announced by Iranian Defense Minister, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, that an assembly line for the Karrar would soon be built at the Bani Hashim Defense Industrial Complex. The Karrar, designed by the Organization of Defense Industries of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was first unveiled in August 2016. The Iranian Army began development of a new vehicle based on the T-72 but with more advanced systems. Two months later, Pourdastan himself backtracked, stating that Iran was no longer interested in buying Russian tanks because it was able to produce an MBT of equal capabilities. This was meant to equip Iran in a manner adapted to a more modern warfare environment, in anticipation of the end of UN sanctions. In December 2015, the commander of Iran’s ground forces, Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, announced that Iran was interested in purchasing T-90s from Russia. ![]() ![]() Thus, Iran decided to purchase more modern tanks. Selling armament to some factions in the Syrian Civil War and also being involved in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq, Iran could see that the early production models of the T-72 which were in service were no longer able to counter present-day threats. A T-72S of the Iranian Army being carried during a parade in Tehran, the capital of the nation. Iran currently has an estimated number of around 565 T-72s in service. In the mid-1990s, licensed production of the T-72S began in Iran at the Bani Hashim Defense Industrial Complex. In the years following the war, Iran bought 200 second-hand T-72M and T-72M1 tanks from Belarus which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, could no longer afford to keep them in service. These were superior to the Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean MBTs in service with Iran. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988) Iran was able to capture, according to some estimates, up to a hundred Iraqi T-72 Ural tanks. ![]()
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