Shi'a principles and Iran's strategic culture towards ballistic missile deployment

Abstract

Iran's January 2020 missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq following the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani correspond to a stark change of Iran's approach. Iran has namely abstained from using its ballistic missile program (BMP), which was only used twice after the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War: in 2017 and 2018, in both instances in retaliation against ISIS attacks. The article explores the change in Iran's employment of its BMP from a strategic culture perspective while paying special attention to the principles of Shi'a Islam, which form a particular discursive habitat in which Iran's strategic actions are framed and rationalized. Iran's approach to the BMP is thus inseparable from qisas (retaliation), while obeying the overarching principle of maslahat; but also characterized by the varying importance of the the principles zarare aghall, ezterar and nafye sabil. We conclude that a perspective focusing on religious principles can contribute to our understanding of strategic cultural change, in what concerns its possible orientation, range and limits.

A ‘Soft’ Balancing Ménage à Trois? China, Iran and Russia Strategic Triangle vis-à-vis US Hegemony

“…The relationship of the three states with the West, and particularly the United States, ranges from tense to conflictual, while all three, on many occasions, have expressed their shared worldviews for a multipolar world and their dissatisfaction with US unilateral actions. 2 This tendency has been particularly evident after the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and the respective sanctions against Iran (Eslami & Vieira, 2020, 2022; Eslami, 2021).…”