Indeed how could I forget that one.... They were supposed to be "VM" variant. Yeah , as virtual as a Virtual Machine, I even made that joke about it back then
Those were the ones extensively involved in training by the IDF over Greece AFAIK, notwithstanding direct intelligence transfer on the systems by the Russians to them "Kazars"... as a rule of thumb, Iran should NEVER acquire or even partner with anything defense-related with Russia, or at least not the electronics. Nothing that can be tampered with or its specs leaked...
And that was me believing the IRGC PR about dozens of Bavar-373 being produced in parallel as early as 2020. One of the first things they should do after this war is to double, triple, quadruple production lines for Sayyad missiles and associated radar apparatus... I truly hope the OPTICS and Shiraz building were indeed emptied since June, 'cause if they were not and there were no redundancies or reserved assets preserved in UGFs or alternative locations, you can add a good 2-3 years more of recovery for IEI and SA-Iran
People must realize that no matter the shape in which Iran will get out of this militarily, there will be no "Chinese Marshall plan" afterwards to compensate. That's only for Israel. ToT and deliveries will be as painfully difficult to negotiate and materialize as before, so any net loss of essential production equipment will mean disastrous additions to reconstruction. One must recall that a good part of Iran's self-sufficiency program was conducted in the mid-to-late 2000s without the current level of sanctions and the MCTR, plus both Russians and Chinese were significantly more permissive back then in providing Iran with tech and services. So any machine-tool lost today means a magnitude more difficulties to get our hands on anything similar.
Any asset or important piece of infrastructure damaged or destroyed means we'll have many Norouz and birthdays to go before things are re-established. I might be in denial by asking Grok and Claude, which both assess a 3-5 year ballpark for the IADS + full MIssile/Drone production restoration, and 5-7 for the port and shipbuilding infrastructure, which I find overly optimistic but wish to believe. So long as the clock hasn't been set back 10-20 years, I consider the conflict not too damaging industrially.
But Iranians lives on the other hand, are not recoverable...
That war must not drag on, for lives first and foremost to be preserved, and precious infrastructure left in Iran as well. Iran will need anything she has to rebuild as fast as possible.
