How do the militaries of Israel and Iran compare amid fears of an all-out war?

TAIPEI: Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran's reprisals have brought the two Middle East adversaries closer to an all-out war, which also threatens to draw in the United States, at least to some degree.
So how do the militaries of Iran and Israel stack up against each other?
Iran boasts a large standing force but also relies on proxies and undercover operations that have been severely disabled in recent months by US and Israeli actions.
Israel, meanwhile, relies on both subterfuge and robust regular ground and air forces that are apparently unmatched in the region. Though roughly equal in the number of troops, the two militaries bring strikingly different tactics and firepower.
Where does Iran stand?
On paper, Iran would seem to have an advantage in numbers, with 88 million people and a land area of 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) compared to Israel's 9 million people and 22,000 square kilometers (8,500). Militarily, however, those numbers mean little.
Iran's troops are divided between the regular armed forces, generally commissioned with guarding Iran's borders and carrying out more conventional military tasks, and the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, including the elite Quds Force, the strategic missile command and the cyberforce.
The regular forces command the bulk of the troops — around 600,000 men — and standard equipment, while the Revolutionary Guard has about 200,000 personnel split between various divisions. Along with Iran's proxies, its conventional forces are believed to have been heavily degraded by Israeli and US military operations over the past year.
Iran's military equipment is a hodgepodge, including some provided by the Soviet Union and others by the US prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, along with more recent Russian additions. With an estimated air strength of 350 antiquated planes in its air force, it lags far behind Israel in both quantity and quality.
Iran, however, does have the ability to produce a wide range of UAV's and similar equipment, typified by the Shahed attack drones it has sold to Russia in large numbers for use in the war in Ukraine.
On Thursday, an Israeli military official said that Iran used a missile with multiple warheads, posing a new challenge to its defenses. There was no immediate independent analysis of the attack.

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