January 10-2014
The Supreme Leader is unhappy over the declining birth rate in Iran and now the military has weighed in and said it is having trouble filling its ranks because there are so few teenagers any more.
Gen. Musa Kamali, the longtime head of the conscription service, has announced that conscription duty time will be raised from 21 months this year to 24 for the year beginning at Now Ruz
He said that between 1980 and 2001 the number of births fell by more than half. As a result, few men are turning 18 each year and the pool of draftees is becoming smaller. Kamali said he may have to eliminate some or even all of the deductions allowed the better educated. And he is killing the option for the wealthy to buy their way out of military service.
The law says the maximum conscription service is 24 months and that the military can set a lower figure down to 18 months.
But under a law that took effect in 2011, a conscript who is a high school graduate would have two months shaved off whatever is the normal service time, and the service reduction rises with more education: four months off for an associate degree; six months for a bachelor’s degree; eight months for a master’s; and 10 months off for a doctorate.
That means a Ph.D. holder will only serve 14 months of draft duty next year when the basic duty time is raised to 24 months but actually applied only to school dropouts.
And Kamali said he might have to scrap those reductions to fill the ranks.
US military manpower specialists consider short tours of duty too little to produce a skilled military. A key reason the US military opted for an all-volunteer force in 1970 was that the 24-month draft tour was considered inadequate for a hi-tech military.
A former congressional aide who worked on the all-volunteer system told the Iran Times, “With a 24-month term, you are running little more than a giant school because so many skills require 14, 16, 18 months of training. The United States switched to four-year volunteers so that troops would spend two-thirds of their time on duty assignments rather than just one-third.”
Those who attend college immediately after high school can postpone military service until they get their degrees. There are medical exemptions as well, but over the years, medical examiners have become stricter. There are also other exemptions, such as for only-children who care for their parents, or for those who work in vital industries.
Those who work as border guards, where many have been killed by smugglers, have their total duty time further shortened.
The basic tour has ranged from 20 to 24 months in most years, though it was down to 18 months in 2009-10. The tour length is normally set at Now Ruz each year.
One objection to military service for many young males is that it delays marriage. Kamali rejected that claims. He told reporters, “Seventy percent of those you who serve in the military are between the ages of 18 and 20, and are discharged between 20 and 21, whereas the average age of marriage is higher.” Kamali also said that Iran is reviewing its policy of offering a reduction in service time for those who are married.
Wealthy Iranians have enjoyed the option of paying rather than serving, which surprisingly has not caused the kind of social friction the United States saw during the Civil War when it allowed draftees to buy a substitute for $300, the equivalent of about $3,000 today. But Kamali said that buy-out will exist no more.
Kamali said, “Because of its discriminatory nature, paying off military service was never desired by the armed forces, and that option has now been closed.” He said that for expatriates, the option of buying out of military service was canceled earlier this year.
Kamali denigrated the popular view that young men detest military service. “In contrast to public opinion,” he said, “serving in the military is welcomed by youth” because, according to him, 80-85 percent of draftees report to the military on time, while only 10-15 percent are absent from military service and very few never report.
Of course, he ignored the fact that draft evaders can be sent to prison and that might impact the willingness to show up for service.
