In the heyday of Iranian military spending under the Shah, Iran had access to the most sophisticated arms in the world and heavily leveraged U.S. suppliers in a major arms-buying surge. The military was rapidly turning into one of the best equipped in the region. However, after the Shah fell in 1979, most of the billions of dollars of arms procurement programs were canceled. When the war with Iraq erupted in the 1980s, the Iranians had to scramble for arms, but were much more restricted in their access due to embargoes and funding problems as the bloody war dragged on. Iran lost a major portion of the arms it had purchased under the Shah and was largely unable to replace them with comparable weapons, often having to settle for less sophisticated types.
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