From Hazrat Ali’s (AS) Zulfiqar, Tipu Sultan’s Mysorean Rockets, Iran’s Sejjil-3, and Ansar Allah’s Burkhan-2H missiles, weapons always played a key role in resistance. In today’s battlefield, one weapon stands out as the equalizer of battles: the RPG-7.
R Khan.
Surat An-Nisa’ [4:102]: let one group of them pray with you, while armed. When they prostrate themselves, let the other group stand guard behind them, and let them be vigilant and armed. The disbelievers would wish to see you neglect your weapons and belongings, so they could launch a sweeping assault on you.
The world watched in awe as Iran’s hypersonic missiles set Dubai’s bases and Bahrain’s Fifth Fleet ablaze. These nonstop sirens in occupied Tel-Aviv-Jaffa were not the first time the false image of empire had been shattered, but the technology and intelligence behind Iranian weapons won over the hearts of the world in a new way. From Basra to Beirut, and the Dahiyeh to Gaza, people watched years of engineering, done under extreme sanctions, fly overhead to strike the oppressor. Similarly, after the US subjected the Korean people to a brutal war and genocide, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was determined never to let its sovereignty be infringed on again. With no peace treaty between the DPRK and the US upon the formal end of the Korean War, another bombing campaign or campaign of economic strangulation was always an imminent possibility. So upon the successful creation of nuclear weapons in 2006, the DPRK breathed a sigh of relief. Just a few weapons deterred the “world’s mightiest” empire.
Both examples show how important weapons are to resistance; they symbolize the protection and honor of a people. Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed that the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon would never relinquish its weapons, emphasizing that the weapons of Hezbollah were the honor of the people. Huey P. Newton also emphasized how the oppressed person who is unarmed is a slave to the armed oppressor; the oppressed should never give up their arms if they want to reject slavery. Karl Marx drew the same conclusion about the working class. And Hazrat Ali’s (AS) sword, Zulfiqar, was immortalized by Prophet Muhammad (AS): “There is no warrior like Ali, There is no sword like Zulfiqar.”
The importance of weapons as keys to liberation has never been doubted, and through all the weapons of resistance, one sticks out in today’s battlefield: The RPG.
But to understand how the RPG-7 came to define asymmetric warfare, you have to go back to where modern rocketry itself begins.
Mysore
The history of the military rocket does not begin in Cold War Soviet laboratories or in the arsenals of Western powers. It begins in 1780s India, with Tipu Sultan of Mysore. The iron-cased rocket, the foundational technology behind every military rocket that followed, was Tipu Sultan’s invention, developed explicitly as a weapon of anti-colonial resistance. This is not a footnote in the history of weapons technology; every rocket that came after, from the Congreve to the RPG-7, even to Iran’s Khorramshahr missiles, exists in a lineage that runs through Mysore. The resistance did not inherit its rockets from empire. Empire inherited its rockets from the resistance.
Tipu Sultan created a military unit called the Rocket Corps, which began with around 500 engineers and grew to over 1,000 soldiers due to the program’s success. He wrote the Fathul Mujahidin as a guide for Muslims resisting British occupation, specifically emphasizing the importance of weapons, with his rockets as the centerpiece. By distributing copies throughout his ranks, he solidified the Mysorean Sultanate’s legacy as one of resistance. The Mysorean rockets turned the tides of the first, second, and third Anglo-Mysorean Wars, with British troops unable to develop an effective counter. At the fourth Anglo-Mysore War, Tipu Sultan was martyred after refusing to surrender. The British brought Arthur Wellesley, the same commander who would later defeat Napoleon, and relied on the betrayal of the Nizam of Hyderabad, Nizam Ali Khan, to finally take Seringapatam after a month-long siege. They needed all of that to win. Even so, the legacy of his rockets would haunt the Western world for years to come.
Following his martyrdom, the British developed their own rockets directly inspired by Mysorean designs. The Congreve Rockets directly influenced military rocket development across the West, eventually contributing to the American Bazooka and the German Panzerfaust during the Second World War. Compared to their predecessors, these were significant leaps forward. The Bazooka in particular could be shouldered, manually aimed, and fired with far greater precision than any rocket weapon that came before it. However, it was not without serious flaws. The propellant system was unreliable, the effective range was limited, and the weapon posed considerable danger to its own operators. Projectiles could detonate prematurely inside the tube, explode mid-flight, or fail to detonate at all upon impact.
The Soviets studied this technology closely and set about addressing its shortcomings. Their first attempt, the RPG-2, suffered from the same fundamental limitation as the Bazooka and Panzerfaust: the projectile was propelled solely by inertia after launch, severely limiting its range and consistency. The Soviet RPG-7 solved this by introducing a sustainer rocket motor that continued to propel the grenade after it left the tube, dramatically increasing both range and accuracy. This innovation changed infantry warfare permanently. A weapon conceived in the 1950s would remain a decisive force on battlefields well into the 21st century, defying obsolescence amid increasingly advanced military technology. What Tipu Sultan originated in Mysore, the Soviets refined in a machine shop. And the world’s resistance movements would be the beneficiaries.
Vietnam
The RPG-7, Ruchnoy Protivotankovyy Granatomyot, meaning hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher, entered guerrilla warfare prominently during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, though its real proof of competency came in Vietnam. The US spent millions on their UH-1 Huey helicopters and M113 APCs, all to get destroyed by a $95 rocket. That same rocket would cost $240 today, and it would still take down million-dollar equipment. These losses in military equipment and personnel devastated US offensives and forced repeated reassessments of strategy.
During the 1968 Tet Offensive, US and South Vietnamese forces came with approximately 1.3 million troops, over 600 aircraft, and over 1,000 tanks and other land vehicles. The National Liberation Front (NLF) were outnumbered by around 500,000 men. Despite this, the RPG-7 played a crucial role in small-scale clashes throughout the offensive. Over 270 American aircraft were destroyed, and numerous helicopters were brought down by North Vietnamese RPG fire. The losses were severe enough that President Lyndon B. Johnson had to request immediate deployment of backup equipment and troops to the region. After around three months of fighting, the NLF declared a strategic victory, and by any measure of the offensive’s political and military achievements, that claim held up.
The dependency of imperialist forces on armored vehicles and aircraft was noted and studied worldwide by guerrilla resistance forces. Several years after the failed aggression on Vietnam came to an end, the Lebanese resistance would apply these tactics against the Israeli Occupation.
Lebanon
Upon the genocidal ground invasion of South Lebanon on June 6th, 1982, occupying Israeli forces massacred Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila, destroyed refugee camps, and launched a massive assault in the Shi’a Dahiyeh. Rather than breaking the population, this created a unifying resistance force that still stands strong today. From 1982 to 2000, resistance factions waged guerrilla warfare at levels never before seen in the region, and by 2000 the occupiers were out of Lebanon.
Five days after the invasion began, that resistance announced itself with devastating clarity. The Battle of Sultan Yacoub took place near the village of the same name on June 10th and 11th, 1982. Occupying Israeli forces from the Giora Lev 90th Division brigade had begun taking up positions around the Lebanese municipality of Hasbaiya, attempting to push back Ba’athist Syrian forces supporting Lebanese resistance factions. On the night of June 10th, the brigade’s goal was to occupy as much territory in Sultan Yacoub village as possible before a ceasefire could be imposed. The movement into the village comprised around 40 soldiers, 5 APCs, and 10 tanks. The Syrian tanks and Lebanese fighters waited for their time to strike, hidden in plain sight throughout the hills. When the brigade reached a high point, they were surrounded by Lebanese and Syrian soldiers and cut off from escape.
As soon as the exit routes were sealed, resistance fighters opened RPG fire on the column. Lebanese and Syrian forces used RPG-7s loaded with PG-7V rockets specifically designed to penetrate heavily armored tanks, comparable to the Merkava and Magach-3. Three occupying soldiers died almost immediately, and four tanks were obliterated within the first hour. The brigade called for artillery support by radio, but by then it made little difference. Over the next six hours, sustained RPG and Syrian tank fire left thirty occupier soldiers dead, five missing, and around five more retreating from the field. Into the morning of June 11th, six Israeli tanks and three APCs were destroyed by RPG fire from a distance, a remarkable achievement against the volume of artillery the occupiers were throwing back. By the end of the battle, three Israeli tanks had been captured. The resistance took no known losses. Those captured tanks sat on display in museums in Damascus and Moscow.
Israel took the lesson seriously. They began deploying and armoring more tanks for future operations. But they underestimated their enemy’s adaptability. By 1985, Hezbollah had officially formed, bringing together numerous Shi’a militias and working alongside Syrian forces, Musa Al-Sadr’s Amal Movement, and communist guerrilla groups across South Lebanon. Resistance fighters quickly identified the weak points in Israeli armor and equipment, disabling or destroying hundreds of tanks throughout the 15-year occupation. The harder Israel armored its tanks, the more precisely the resistance learned to target them.
Iran-Iraq
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi tanks were a critical resource in attempts to capture Iranian towns and positions. Using Soviet tanks, mainly the T-72, T-62, and T-55, these tanks were the backbone of Iraqi mechanized assaults.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, still fresh from its Revolution, had an assortment of American (mainly the M60A1) and British (Chieftain) tanks from its previous neocolonial relationship with the two western powers. However, Iran was politically isolated by Western powers due to its anti-imperialist revolution, where both the Soviet Union and the United States, in an attempt to project their influence on the Arab world, backed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Despite this hurdle, Iranian creativity, actively involved in the guerilla battlefront in Lebanon against the Israeli Occupation, was demonstrated on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq border. Iran used two-man motorcycle teams to take down Iraqi armor. The equation was simple: there would be a motorcycle driver accompanied by a gunner with an RPG.
Dubbed “Tank Hunters”, these lethal fighters would destroy or damage incoming tanks, out-maneuvering the dynamic Soviet tanks, striking them with RPGs, and retreating back to safety. This cheap-but-effective strategy was capable of halting Iraqi raids into Iranian border regions, and was also instrumental to Iranian offensives early on in the war.
The RPG’s mass production also allowed Iranians to easily obtain these rockets in the face of an Iraq backed by both belligerents of the Cold War. Despite the mechanized strength of the Iraqi military, Iran was able to fend them off for 8 long years.
Somalia
After the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States accelerated its imperial expansion rapidly, treating the globe as its playground. Clinton’s America got a reality check in 1993 in Somalia. Somali dictator Siad Barre had deliberately turned almost every clan in Somalia against each other, keeping the people weak, which kept him powerful. Upon his deposition, Somalia descended into inter-clan warfare and humanitarian catastrophe. The Somali National Alliance, led by Mohamed Farrah Aidid, sought to build clan alliances and restore some semblance of stability. That project might have had a chance if UNOSOM II hadn’t intervened. What began as a food-delivery mission quickly became a counterinsurgency operation, backed by Pakistani, Malaysian, and American troops whose first target was Aidid and his radio station, Radio Mogadishu, located in the center of Mogadishu.
A group of Pakistani UN peacekeepers was sent to destroy one of the radio stations. They were met by protestors demanding that they leave. UN forces opened fire, killing a Somali protester, sparking a clash between UN troops and Somali civilians defending their sovereignty. The altercation left 60 peacekeepers and over 80 Somali civilians dead. This led directly to a US operation to hunt Aidid, Operation Gothic Serpent, during which American troops, accompanied by Black Hawk and AC-130 gunship support, recklessly killed civilians, destroyed homes, and massacred villages searching for him. By the time October came, hatred toward American forces in Somalia had reached a peak.
On October 3rd, 1993, US troops planned to kidnap two of Aidid’s high-ranking lieutenants. Two Black Hawk helicopters were dispatched deep into Mogadishu, backed up by heavy armed vehicle support. Forty minutes into the raid, a Somali fighter fired a mortar, baiting a Black Hawk helicopter into flying low enough to be in range. An RPG-7 loaded with a modified rocket fuse, specifically adapted to take down advanced helicopters, struck the first Black Hawk and sent it spinning into the streets. It was only the second time a Black Hawk had ever been shot down; the first had been a month earlier, also by Somali RPG fire. A second Black Hawk moved in to rescue survivors from the wreckage. SNA commander Yusuf Dahir Mo’alim ordered his men to engage, and one member of the seven-man team fired the same modified RPG and knocked out the helicopter’s rotor assembly. With two Black Hawks down, US Humvees began pushing toward Aidid’s lieutenants’ last known location and were ambushed at every corner. Civilians joined the battle. Barricades went up across Mogadishu using rocks and garbage. The Humvees retreated, riddled with bullets. Eighteen US soldiers were killed, hundreds more were critically injured, and UNOSOM II operations were immediately ceased. As the surviving soldiers left Somalia, the dead were being dragged through the streets by the people whose city had been invaded.
Chechnya
A year after Somalia, the emerging imperial order took another blow, this time from post-Soviet Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Brought to power with US backing to install free-market and pro-NATO policies, Yeltsin presided over what Russians came to call the “wild nineties,” a period of extreme extortion, mafia violence, and economic collapse. Amid all of that, a bigger problem was forming in the Caucasus Mountains. In Chechnya, an already unhappy population had been largely ignored through the chaos of the Soviet collapse. That neglect transformed into a full-scale separatist insurgency.
Led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet pilot, and animated by the legacy of the Sufi warrior Imam Shamil, Chechen fighters were determined to defend their homeland. In Sebastian Smith’s book Allah’s Mountains, he documents the creative ways the Chechens resisted Yeltsin’s invasion, including soldiers constructing rocket launchers from car exhaust pipes connected to battery fuses. Figures such as Ibn Al-Khattab, Shamil Basayev, and Ramzan Kadyrov (current Chechen President), along with his father, were instrumental in developing guerrilla tactics against the Russian Federation. Several of them had fought against or alongside the Soviets in Afghanistan, and they remembered the Russian army’s core doctrine: never let your armor be damaged. They would exploit this to the maximum.
Despite Chechnya’s mountainous terrain, the decisive battleground was urban, specifically Grozny. On New Year’s Eve 1994, the Russian 131st Maikop Brigade launched an armored assault on the city with over 6,000 soldiers, 100-plus tanks, and 3,000-plus armored vehicles. Sebastian Smith observed the fear among Chechen fighters in the days before the assault, one of them saying: “We know it’s a suicide mission, they have more tanks than we have men.” The Russians, for their part, expected little serious resistance.
At first, they got none. Russian forces moved through Grozny’s streets with little opposition until the 131st Maikop Brigade seized the Grozny train station and received a radio message: “Welcome to Hell.” What followed was indeed hell. Chechen teams of three fighters positioned themselves on rooftops and began firing RPGs down into the column. The tanks, built to engage threats at ground level, could not rotate and aim upward fast enough to respond. The narrow streets of Grozny eliminated any tactical advantage that armor would have offered in open terrain. The Russians pushed more equipment into the city center, which only deepened their encirclement. Smith notes that the Chechen fighters had almost no military vehicles, with the majority moving on foot from battle to battle, which made them invisible between engagements. By January 3rd, just three days after the assault began, the Russians had lost 790 men, 20 tanks, and 102 military vehicles. By 1996, the Chechen rebels had won the war and established an autonomous state. A Russian airstrike, reportedly assisted by US intelligence, killed Dudayev that same year. A significant loss, but one that could not erase what he and his fighters had demonstrated. Chechnya remains an autonomous republic within Russia to this day.
Afghanistan
On August 6th, 2011, the US military suffered its greatest single-incident loss of life in Afghanistan. Ten years into the illegal invasion and occupation by the US, the Taliban were gaining in strength. In the early days of August, US forces were attempting to secure Maidan Wardak province, bordering Kabul directly, and serving as a critical buffer against Taliban pressure on the capital. The province’s mountainous terrain made ground infiltration nearly impossible, so the US Army relied on helicopter deployment and bombing raids. But the terrain had a consequence the US never fully solved: helicopter sounds echoed for miles through those mountains, rendering operational stealth impossible before missions even started.
On August 6th, a Special Operations Command-led mission launched to neutralize Taliban commander Qari Tahir. Two US Army Ranger patrols were already in the area conducting surveillance. Upon hearing helicopters approaching, Taliban fighters split into teams and took up positions to wait. A third Chinook carrying 38 personnel was called in as backup. As it approached its landing path, the echoes had already given away its trajectory. The split teams fired three rocket-propelled grenades at the Chinook as it came in to land. It crashed. All 38 occupants were killed. By the time support arrived, the fighters were gone.
The event became a focal point for backlash against the Obama administration’s decision to surge 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan two years earlier. Deployment numbers began declining in the aftermath, and this incident stands as one of the clearer early turning points in the long American exit from Afghanistan that would culminate in 2021.
Palestine
No study of the RPG’s modern use would be complete without examining its deployment by Palestinian resistance factions. Whether it’s Abu’l Hany in Jenin or Abu Hamza in Gaza, the RPG-7’s work in Palestine is remarkable. Since 2020, the Al-Qassam and Al-Quds Brigades have regularly posted first-person-view footage of their operations in Gaza and Jenin. In this footage, fighters are seen loading rocket launchers with either Hamas’s homemade “Yasin” RPG-7 variant or DPRK-supplied F-7 rockets, and then firing on IOF positions and artillery parked throughout Gaza. One of these videos shows a scene that defines the existence of the Palestinian resistance. It depicts a man loading a rocket launcher and aiming it at an IOF tank. As he aims, he begins to cry and says to himself before firing, “Oh God, forgive me for this act. The Israelis kill our children and our families, destroy our homes, and tear apart everything we hold dear. Oh God, relieve us from this oppression.”
In other footage posted by resistance media, a specific rocket has become unmistakable: the DPRK-made F-7, identifiable by its distinctive red stripe, used with the RPG-7 launcher. In the context of three years of genocide in Palestine, that red stripe has become a symbol of something beyond the weapon itself. It represents the Axis of Resistance as a living, functional network, from Juche Korea to the streets of Gaza, the fight against imperialism understood as one struggle.
The F-7 has appeared in numerous videos used against IOF Merkava and Magach tanks, and unlike earlier generations of RPG engagements, where the goal was often to disable, the footage shows tanks obliterated outright. The F-7 rocket achieves this level of damage through its pyrotechnical delay feature, which allows the rocket to penetrate armor using its sustainer motor before detonating. By triggering the explosion from within the tank rather than on impact, the resulting blast is far more lethal, nearly always fatal to anyone inside.
The DPRK’s supply of F-7 rockets to Gaza, routed through Iran as part of the wider Axis of Resistance, illustrates a meaningful partnership rooted in shared opposition to imperial domination. It is a partnership that confuses Western analysts who insist on reading these relationships through the lens of ideology alone, missing the material solidarity underneath. Together, these relationships reveal that the resistance of Palestine has never stood alone. It has instead been part of a unified front stretching from the streets of Tehran to the suburbs of Beirut to the corridors of Pyongyang, sustained by rockets, engineering, and decades of accumulated knowledge about exactly how to bring down the oppressor.
R. Khan is an independent writer and researcher exploring the intersections of historical analysis, geopolitics, and (Islamic) philosophy.
NOTE: The author has requested that this article may not be published except with explicit permission. Please email voxummah@proton.me for permission.
Sources
[13]: Steel and Blood: South Vietnamese Armor and the War for Southeast Asia. Naval Institute Press, 2008. P 33
[23]: Allah’s Mountains, Sebastian Smith
[24]: Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power
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