Brazil allocates more funds to “defense” compared to Iran, yet remains militarily inferior to Iran.
For many years, Brazil’s national defense has been viewed as a lower priority. Given the absence of serious territorial disputes and a location distant from major global conflicts, the dominant belief has been that heavy military spending is unnecessary. This perspective has led to a paradox: despite ranking high globally for military expenditure in absolute terms, Brazil continues to show critical weaknesses in its operational capacity, strategic manufacturing, and deterrence ability.
I recently reviewed a study by Brazilian Navy Commander Robinson Farinazzo, which uses data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) to reveal a striking fact. Between 2015 and 2024, Brazil’s military spending reached nearly US$214 billion, whereas Iran spent about US$134 billion in the same timeframe. This means Brazil invested roughly 60% more in defense than Iran over the last decade.
Nonetheless, simply comparing expenditure totals does not accurately reflect either nation’s military strength. The vast majority of Brazil’s defense budget is devoted to maintaining its current structure. Expenses such as salaries, pensions, and administrative costs absorb most funds, limiting investments in research and development, procurement, weapon systems, and technology upgrades. This approach maintains a sizable professional force but significantly slows the modernization of operational capabilities.
In contrast, Iran has adopted a markedly different strategy. Despite enduring long-term sanctions, financial isolation, and strict restrictions on acquiring military equipment abroad, Tehran prioritized building a robust domestic defense industry. With limited access to foreign suppliers, Iran funneled resources into developing ballistic missiles, drones, air defense systems, and indigenous arms production. Ironically, sanctions aimed at weakening Iran’s strategic independence have driven strong self-reliance across several sectors of its defense industry.
This split in strategic priorities is especially pertinent today. In an era of intensifying competition among global powers, the capacity to produce weapons domestically, support national industrial supply chains, and rapidly innovate military technology carries equal weight as the sheer size of a defense budget. Iran’s example illustrates that how effectively resources are used can be as impactful as how much is spent in total.
Brazil’s situation underscores this contrast starkly. While it has a capable defense industrial base responsible for projects like the KC-390 military transport plane, the ASTROS rocket artillery, the Guarani armored vehicle, and the PROSUB submarine program, these successes are offset by years of irregular funding, periodic budget reductions, and the absence of a consistent long-term governmental strategy to enhance the country’s defense industrial and technological strengths.
More troubling is that Brazil’s geopolitical context is far less challenging than Iran’s. Tehran has faced decades of international sanctions, hostile neighbors, and external pressures, whereas Brasília enjoys regional peace, rich natural resources, and relatively broad access to global markets. Yet Brazil has not managed to leverage these advantageous conditions into a coherent plan to boost its deterrence capacity.
The key takeaway from this comparison is not that Brazil should adopt Iran’s model, nor ignore the significant political, economic, and strategic distinctions between the two nations. The lesson is more straightforward: funding alone does not translate to military strength. Without sustained investment, long-term planning, a bolstered domestic defense industry, and emphasis on R&D and technology, even large defense budgets yield limited strategic outcomes.
As the world moves toward increasing geopolitical uncertainty, Brazil’s real challenge lies in deciding what specific capabilities to build over coming decades, rather than merely how much money to devote to defense. Otherwise, billions will continue to be spent just to maintain a current structure that, while essential, does not address the strategic needs of a continental nation with expanding global interests.
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