Why is Iran so unwilling to do the same?
I don't think it had anything to do with us.
Combination of 2 major factors
1) Politics. Russia not willing to sell anything "game changing" so to speak with Iran due to Israel and the USA. (That has changed after the start of the Ukraine war). Hell we struggled for years to get 5 battalions of S-300PMU2 from them since 2006 that we paid for but never got delivered until around 5 few years ago. We had to sue them in international court to get it delivered. Since 2007 we have not done any military purchases from Russia. Why would we after that kind of backstab. (Of course I believe that has changed, since Russia literally hates the USA for having many of its men killed, and Israel clearly sided with the USA and Ukraine).
In the 1990's we were major buyers of Russian military equipment, they were willing, a few hurdles here and there and they did cancel an order of T-72S mid way due to US pressure. Overall, Iran completely changed it's military from tired one in 1988 to a major land power (largest armored and artillery corps in the region in terms of numbers, packed with Russian origin gear. Mass infantry, and armor essentially). If we were willing to buy more land equipment it's possible they would sell it before 2022, because it was no threat to the USA or Israel, but we never offered to buy. Their is no land threat that would require it with inventory already being so high. US invasion is also slim to 0% probability.
2) Overall military priority; In the 90s, and early 2000s, priority is driven very aggressively on denying airspace to the USA. Through improvements in AD and disrupting and degrading US airpower(through long range fires). It's not enough to just say you have a 500km missile that you can use for tactical strikes, you need the inventory, large scale production, and safe infrastructure and housing for the gigantic task that is to degrade coalition airpower. In terms of numbers, a few hundred is not sufficient for this task, this may be standard for 99% of countries but for a country like Iran you need atleast over 10,000+, and you need places like the Ural mountains to keep them safe. As Russia needed 1000s for Nato, Iran would need a similar numbers if not more, and more importantly several tunnel networks and several nuclear hardened mountain facilities to safely produce more equipment and to prepare the infrastructure needed to have an unprecedented volume of strikes that would be considered debilitating for a tac-air power like Israel or the USA. Preparing this would require alot of effort and investment and was really the only way to wage a imposed war that can lead to some success.
Had Iran invested in airpower, like Su-35's or Su-30, perhaps it could have around 200 units at the moment, which would be useful for a period of time, but a very short period of time. When dealing with the US and Israel they will outnumber us in the air not only with better systems but probably in a 10:1 overmatch in airpower, not including their strategic bombers, and EW platforms, C&C, ELINT/SIGNIT planes etc...
The cost of investing in Russia airpower would be so inflated (they would not give us a nice deal), that it was better off using the 10s of billions that it would cost and instead building a indigenous ability that does not rely on whether or not Russia wants to provide spare parts or air-launched munitions to us. Time is of the essence, as we were going to be next after Iraq was in 2003.
The capacities that have come from those years that followed has lead to alot of confidence in the ability to deter US threat against Iran, and to cause severe damage to the global economy incase Iran's oil infrastructure is destroyed, not to mention the heavy investments into becoming a nuclear threshold state (with very secure facilities that only heavy nuclear bunker busters with B-52s can destroy ), not some Israeli surgical joke operation.
With these important priorities setup, the pivot to airpower I believe is available, now that the two main barriers are removed of politics and priorities. Good indications their is a large deal for Su-35s and other equipment from radars and helicopters to fill existing gaps for the time being with cooperation in tech as well to respond to regional weaknesses points we have like Saudi AF and UAE AF. We will still remain a missile centric force because the main danger to Iran is the United States, but things cannot be neglected forever.
Their has been a great deal of effort to generate a waves of BM strikes in a short period of time, many with submunition warheads that would be unseen in the world history. For instance, latest gen of liquid fuel missiles in Iran can carry 80 submunitions with 20kg each, impacting a supersonic speeds at an air base. Warhead is course corrected with gas thrusters before release for higher accuracy. If you add up the number of missiles, the low cost centric designs and manufacturing, you can get an idea of the number of submunition impacts on airbases, The smaller diameter missiles can fit well over 100 small submunitions (maybe 3-5kg)(Blue) and a few of the same large 20kg munitions (red) in an assorted munition warhead. all impacting at very high speeds, and as you know even small objects at high speeds can do alot of damage to parked aircraft and normal buildings. Illustration:
So doing quick math on this gives you the scope of the number of impacts that can occur in an airbases (10,000+) in a single salvo at supersonic or near supersonic speeds. Ultimately this kind of endeavor is very expensive to achieve, and unless Iran is drowning in money (which it isn't due to 40 years of sanctions), this was the main priority. But this is achieved and they can move on now.
The Immortal wrote some good posts about the missile-centric warfare if you have some spare time to read. Very very few people really understand the investments that were done here in missile production and scale is unbelievable. If Iran has to put missiles on rail wagons to increase fire rate, one can imagine they have alot of missiles to burn.
Iraqi PMUs: Attacking the bases of the world superpower in Iraq and Syria. HZ: Hey we hit a satellite dish for 9th time and lost 3 guys. Much easier for PMU to hit a US base without Iron Dome in their own territory than for Hezbollah to hit an abandoned military base protected by drones and...
pdf.defence.pk
The article does not mention VX unless I missed it somewhere. It says: Yeah…what do you think nerve gas is? The most common nerve gas since post-WWII is VX aka Sarin. The latest nerve variant is the Russian novichok which an amount as a little as weight of a single snowflake can kill a...
pdf.defence.pk
en.wikipedia.org
