MANAMA: By Mahmood Rafique Editor: While the conventional military balance remains heavily in favour of the US and its allies, Iran has tipped the balance of effective force in the Middle East to its advantage.
“Iran has done this by developing a sovereign capability to conduct warfare through third parties. Iran contests and wins wars ‘fought amongst the people’, not wars between states. It avoids symmetrical state-on-state conflict, knowing it will be outgunned. Instead, it pursues asymmetrical warfare through non-state partners,” Dr John Chipman CMG, Director-General and Chief Executive, IISS, said.
In his opening remarks on Friday, at Ritz-Carlton, IISS Manama Dialogue 2019 Dr Chipman said Iran’s influence operations that have had the greatest strategic impact on the geopolitical situation.
“Iran has developed this capability to fight and win while maintaining hostilities at a level that minimises the likelihood of retaliation against Iran itself. In Syria, for example, Iran’s Quds Force directed both foreign and domestic militias to save Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Iran is now embedding itself in Syria’s evolving government and informal security structures. While this is affordable, flexible and deniable for Tehran, it also works to counter any US presence in the country, enhance Iran’s threat to Israel, hedge against Russian policy and ensure a lasting role regardless of the Assad regime’s fate. We see now how Iran has become almost inextricably integral to the domestic politics of Iraq.”
“While there have been many studies of individual national cases, no one has examined comprehensively and forensically the extent of Iran’s influence operations in the Middle East or provided a detailed taxonomy of the relationships it has cultivated. This month, the IISS has launched a strategic dossier, which is the culmination of 15 months’ work, that provides the best available open source information on this issue. These are some of our conclusions, independently arrived at.
“This sovereign capability is of greater strategic value to Tehran than its conventional forces, its ballistic missiles or even its rejuvenating nuclear programme. It is a weapon of choice that is peculiarly suited to today’s regional conflicts. These contests are not defined by state-on-state warfare, involving parity of forces subject to international law, but are complex and congested battlespaces involving no rule of law or accountability, low visibility, and multiple players who represent a mosaic of local and regional interests.”
“Iran’s asymmetric warfare has encountered no effective international response. Iran’s adversaries cannot simply rebalance its influence in the region by the application or accumulation of conventional power. Conventional force has neither deterred, nor limited, the steady development, over forty years, of Iran’s sovereign capability to conduct this specialised type of warfare. Its ‘persistent engagement’ in neighbouring jurisdictions is hard for others to match because it has honed a specialist strategy for building its own support system within fragile states. Its doctrine is rooted in Iranian war-fighting experience and revolutionary ideology. It often exploits the Shia community’s affinity with Iran, but also sometimes enrolls non-Shia communities that share Iran’s objectives.
“The regime counts on this carefully curated ability to attract minorities and the disenfranchised beyond its borders. It has little inclination to surrender this influence network to earn a prize labelled: ‘international rehabilitation’. Iran’s charisma in the eyes of its partners derives from its survival as an outlaw and alternative. While inclusion in the international order would have economic benefits for Tehran, it would require constraints to be placed on the remote warfare capability of the Quds Force. Iran and the Quds Force cannot be both revolutionary and part of the international order.
“Iran may eventually enter into negotiations over the extent of its influence networks. But so far, its reaction to mounting pressure has been to defend its allies, hold fast to its partnerships, and repeat the narrative of resistance. The Supreme Leader could reverse this strategic choice. However, Iran’s influence networks comprise a sovereign capability that is now part of its strategic personality. Renouncing them would entail not only a loss of influence but of identity. They have become a core strategic asset to Iran. Sanctions alone are unlikely to force the regime to give up this sovereign capability, which has given it such a vital outer cordon of protection, and an implanted political role in neighbouring states,” Dr Chipman added.
“Weak states and divided societies are easy prey for Iranian influence. In Iraq, Syria and Yemen, Iran has pursued non-state partnerships opportunistically. In countries that have been able to develop a measure of good governance, Iran’s ability to develop influence networks has been blunted, limiting any ambition to create the next Hizbullah.
“Neighbourhood fragility is good for Iran’s way of warfare; strong institutions that serve a healthy national purpose are a necessary, if not always sufficient, first line of defence against it. An international debate on how to cope with Iran’s way of warfare needs to be based on the facts of this uniquely generated strategic capability.
Also, this month, we have released a second strategic dossier. It is on Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (or ISR) in the Gulf and provides the best assessment of what is required to achieve ISR collective competence in the five domains of land, sea, air, space and cyber. Why did we choose to look at this capability?
Gulf states may no longer be able to rely on US ISR to meet capability gaps as Washington’s wider security concerns increase demand for these systems in the Indo-Pacific and along Europe’s eastern flank. The present US administration is clearly focusing on these two other regions as directed by the National Security Strategy. This poses the question of how Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members can improve their own capacity for ISR collection and exploitation, individually or otherwise.
“While the importance of ISR in containing and countering security threats facing the region is clear, there appears to be little to no sharing of, or cooperation on, ISR capabilities within the GCC. The dossier finds that although tensions within the
“GCC make any collective approach to ISR unlikely, a bilateral approach between member states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could be both achievable and mutually beneficial.
“With Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war, having exposed ISR capability and exploitation limitations, the dossier concludes that GCC countries’ national ISR capabilities do not fulfil current operational needs. Border and coastal surveillance and security are concerns for all in the region, and ISR is important in addressing these. We hope this dossier provides an assessment that is helpful.”
“We note in the dossier that China has been a willing provider of armed UAVs for ISR purposes to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, systems these countries were unable to access elsewhere. Appreciating this larger role of Beijing in the region, and the increasing engagement of Japan as well, is the reason why the IISS has been consistently aiming to enlarge the presence of Asian powers at this Dialogue and to ensure that Gulf Arab leaders are offered opportunities to participate in our IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.”
