The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy has achieved what it was prepared for, blocking the Strait of Hormuz. It is an exception, though. Iran’s air defense and air force could not put up a minor fight against the aggressor aircraft. The missile force is rationing the firing of projectiles and drones, humbled to a shadow of its former self. The military’s internal communications are degraded or deemed unreliable owing to the enemy’s capability of deep eavesdropping. Consequently, Iran’s military branches and their units are morphing into a hotch-potch of decentralized militias, war-gamed to efficiently strike pre-designated targets while assessing the impact through foreign mainstream and social media coverage to determine the next course of action.
Concurrently, Tehran has burned through Israeli, US and Gulf missile interceptor stockpiles, brought aviation hubs to a near standstill except in Saudi Arabia and Oman, disrupted production of liquified petroleum gas and oil, and significantly hampered its shipment to the world, and spiked global insurance costs of maritime vessels. If the United States blinks first, Iran achieves a significant symbolic victory. In its fight for survival, the clerical establishment is winning every day by not collapsing. The challenges are complex and compounding for distant but powerful war-initiators, ranging from domestic political perceptions in the United States and Israel to the cost of war in terms of money and body bags in pursuit of a so-far elusive quick victory. Cognizant that it may not be able to block the Strait of Hormuz for long under immense enemy firepower, Iran has trained and equipped its conventional and asymmetrical military units in compliance with its forward-defense doctrine. Iran’s unconventional arsenal includes missiles, drones, speedboats, Hamas (Palestine), Hezbollah (Lebanon), Hashd-al-Shaabi (Iraq), Ansarallah (Yemen), the Zeinabiyoun Brigade (Pakistan), the Fatemiyoun Brigade (Afghanistan), Husseiniyyun (Azerbaijan) and other proxies.
Iran’s forward-defense doctrine has subtly blended all instruments of force and coercion by interplaying regular and irregular modes of warfighting to serve the objective of keeping its own territory clear of the conflict. The forward-defense thinking originated from the admission of limitations of the Iranian state and military’s conventional capabilities. The strategy rests on an interplay of conventional deterrence and plausible deniability. Learning from its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has found greater potential in projecting influence and power through civilian society groups, emerging media platforms, alongside non-state armed actors, unmanned aerial vehicles and missile arsenal. From a purely military standpoint, the forward-defense doctrine rests on capitalizing on its rivals’ weaknesses as well as compensating for its own by employing cost-effective solutions to deter enemy attacks.
The term “forward” or translating it a bit crudely as “offence” means to “inflict damage to the enemy’s military and vital assets in its territory in a preemptive manner.” The defensive doctrine stipulates denying an adversary the objective he seeks by “ruling out any initiation of hostilities and strictly confining the combat to the defines of one’s own territory.” Hence, Iran’s forward-defense doctrine is a clever interplay of both offensive and defensive doctrines while being based on the concept of conventional deterrence.
Iran’s acknowledged state of weakness led it to create a gray-zone area to exercise coercion, influence and gain advantage. However, Iran’s reliance on its missile force reflects tactical overconfidence and the erosion of plausible deniability. As Iran fired ballistic missiles and drones, the forward-defense doctrine was maimed in the face of a massive and superior counterattack by Israel. Tehran’s proxy militias lost their leaders to the enemy and a direct link to Iran as Syria’s Assad regime fell to the opposition.
Before the “Arab Spring,” Iran was implementing its “mosaic defence” doctrine, conceived in 2005. The previous strategy was thoroughly defensive in nature and relied on naval and air-defense capabilities to disrupt the adversary’s control of sea lanes and airspace. Nonetheless, it did essentially rely upon a symmetrical approach: mobilization of a large, dispersed naval militia force to inflict war of attrition against the enemy.
Evidently, the forward-defense doctrine weakened civilian controls, perpetuating the existing “offensive bias,” given the IRGC’s upper hand in the state’s executive and policy affairs. Worsening the imbalance in civil-military relations led to a trigger-happy military and its many proxies, ranging from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Lebanon and Yemen.
All in all, the IRGC’s objectives remain to:
- Threaten and disrupt navigation in the Gulf.
- Bank on plausible deniability while arming proxy militias.
- Extend strategic outreach with enemies not sharing borders to project power.
- Impart confidence in Shiite communities in near and far neighborhoods.
- Create a large arsenal to swarm and overwhelm enemy defenses and other countermeasures.
Retaliation against Iran’s colossal losses originated from Iraq-based Shiite militias — Hashd al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). On day five of the war, Abu Hassan al-Fariji, secretary general of a PMF constituent, was mysteriously assassinated in Babil Governorate. This coincided with the report of airborne landings of foreign forces in western Iraq. At least 30 Iraqis were killed and dozens were injured in air strikes targeting the PMF headquarters in Anbar. However, Iran and the PMF continue to attack Iraqi and US facilities in Baghdad and Erbil. The US and Israeli air forces have relentlessly pounded PMF bases and munition depots. Unlike Hamas and Hezbollah and Ansarallah, the IRGC’s Iraqi proxies have land corridors with Iran for possible provision of weapons, foot soldiers and advisors. Though incorporated in the Iraqi armed forces in 2015, the PMF’s significant constituents such as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada remain distinct within the Iraqi armed forces due to their first loyalty to Iran.
Hezbollah also retaliated against Israel for launching a full-scale war against Iran. The attack was subpar by Hezbollah’s own standards, exposing its depleted stockpile and heightened desperation.
The Houthis’ guns have remained silent so far. Their rhetoric, however, has not. While many observers believe that Ansarallah is acting with prudence and pragmatism, others believe the stockpiles of missiles and drones is limited after recent Israeli and allied strikes. The Houthis may like to wait out the Iran war while holding the fort to later attack the southern Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab. The proponents of pragmatism within the militia believe that Saudi Arabia and Oman have been successful in assuaging the pro-Iran militia with political incentives. The Assad remnants in Syria offer Iran little hope for resistance, though the Alawite majority lives in coastal regions of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Azerbaijan has launched a spree to hunt and arrest Husseiniyyun’s members and sympathizers. Baku has released photos of alleged pro-Iran activists as the hunt for more continues.
Iran activated the Zeinabiyoun Brigade in Pakistan on March 2, leading to violent protests in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region and the southern metropolis Karachi. The targets included US consulates in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, besides the burning of military installations and educational institutions. Tehran failed to restrain Islamabad from complying with its defense responsibilities to Saudi Arabia as per the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement. The Fatimeyoun Brigade in Afghanistan remains in Iran’s reserves for later use.
A quick recap of Iran’s asymmetric military units abroad suggests that the forward-defence doctrine has not fully buckled in safeguarding Iran’s security. It has provided Iran with a string of local militias to launch punitive acts against Iran’s enemies, diverting their attention and resources away from Iran. However, the IRGC’s many militias are not volunteers. Iran’s loss of oil revenues and colossal war bill seriously raises the question of affordability. Without salaries and arms supply, the militiamen will demoralize and possibly desert. Like Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Afghanistan have no option but to persecute their Iran-first citizens. Ansarallah might not be willing to risk its rule for becoming the IRGC’s guerrilla fighters. The Iraqi and Lebanese governments are facing tough questions of state credibility and legitimacy in the face of Hezbollah’s belligerence and the PMF’s bellicosity.
