To be fair, Barbarossa was devastating. There is a reason the advance started to be halted once there was a serious reconsideration of strategy. Iran got hit by an espionage attack, those were their failings. The USSR had to face rapidly all the mistakes, poor assumptions, and outdated strategies and solve them in mere weeks. They lost so much of their air force without them even taking off, and had to change their air warfare strategy as a result.
For instance the mechanized corps had been scrapped and their armor divided among infantry units in '39, only for that to be reversed in '40, but not in time for them to be prepared from Barbarossa. All existing reformed mechanized corps were destroyed during Barbarossa, and the rebuild was scrapped. Late '42 new corps that are much more balanced are formed with a new design philosophy. These prove effective.
My point being that Iran had a security failed, a bad one at that. But panic over that is less warranted than panic over Barbarossa. Barbarossa was a genuine defeat of huge proportions. The amount of lives lost in the ensuing fighting, the amount of unforced errors, mistakes, and necessary sacrifices to slow the Germans down are horrific.
Like if someone thought the USSR had lost after Barbarossa, that is a lot more reasonable than thinking Iran was joever because they had a huge security breach. Barbarossa was a series of disasters and the reason they overcame it was because Stalin was great at adapting and because the Soviet people had no choice but to endure. Iran had a security failure, fixed it and then went right along with their expected strategy. No need so far to adapt or even continue enduring a new type of conflict than what they expected.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is performing better is what I am saying
I stand by my comments that Iran's defenses being taken down like that is a huge problem and something that should never be able to happen. But the people saying Iran would COLLAPSE made me scratch my head. Iran is not Syria, Tehran could be in ashes and it still would not make the material reality of Iranian society anything like Syria after a decade of civil war.
Like I said the other day, they survived the Iraq-Iran war for a decade of grueling trench combat and atrocities, a serious failure of air defense is bad, but it is not going to break what endured THAT hell.
Honestly I should relisten to the Radio War Nerd ep on Iran-Iraq, good a time as any.
https://fountain.fm/episode/0XsubVEkxzxcRgSieBbo
this link was safe, warning don't click around on random sites for war nerd premium eps, always get pop ups, no way they are safe.