Iran plans to triple its military budget, a government spokeswoman has said, as tensions with rival Israel rise amid the Israeli military’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon.
The planned defence budget increase is part of a proposal submitted by the government to parliament for approval, Fatemeh Mohajerani, the government spokeswoman, said on Tuesday.
“A considerable raise that amounts to 200 percent has been witnessed in the country’s defence budget,” Mohajerani said, giving no further details.
The proposed budget will be debated, with lawmakers expected to finalise it in March 2025.
Iran’s military spending in 2023 was about $10.3bn, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank.
In comparison, Israel spent $27.5bn on the military in 2023, SIPRI said.
The Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank based in Washington, DC, said the United States provided at least $12.5bn in military aid to Israel from October 7, 2023 to April 2024.
In 2022, Iran’s expenditure on its military was $6.85bn, according to the latest available data published by the World Bank.
On Saturday, the Israeli military launched strikes on military bases in Iran, hitting about 20 sites over several hours in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran, killing four soldiers.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said the “sense of urgency” had increased in Iran following the attack “on its own soil for the first time since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s”.
Israel’s response was long expected after Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel on October 1, firing about 200 projectiles. Iran said the attack was in retaliation for assaults in recent months that killed leaders of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Palestinian group Hamas and the Iranian military.
With increasing Israeli attacks and pressure on Iran-aligned Hezbollah, Serdar said, “Tehran’s defence doctrine has been to keep the war away from Iran, no matter what”, adding, “Now, that defence doctrine is facing tremendous challenges because Iranian officials are seeing the possibility of a conventional war at home … it is becoming a reality more and more.”
On Monday, Iran said it would “use all available tools” to respond to Israel’s weekend attack on military targets.
The US warned Iran of “severe consequences” if it undertakes any further aggressive acts against Israel.
“We will not hesitate to act in self-defence. Let there be no confusion. We believe this should be the end of the direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council.
