ABSTRACT
There has been a significant degree of continuity in the maritime legacy of the Iranian Plateau-based states over the millennia. The Iranian state’s strategy, regardless of a given regime’s economic capacity or regional importance, has relied on a naval posture of minimal deterrence rather than power projection. This chapter aims to highlight Iran’s continuity of maritime strategy, as exemplified in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s naval doctrine. The aim of this effort is twofold. First, the chapter offers an overview of the naval strategy and capabilities of Iran today, which planners and political observers may find useful. Second, the chapter provides a case study into the manner in which geopolitics frames strategic goals and developments over time. The latter effort should be instructive in the understanding, not only of the Persian Gulf, but also of the ways in which states face institutional barriers to political and military strategy regardless of economic capacity, ideology, regime identity, and other factors that theorists may be tempted to identify as causal mechanisms for strategic behavior.
