This paper is a comparative study of the sources of the current changes of military doctrines in the Middle East, using process-tracing and qualitative methods (See John Gerring, Case Study Approach, 2007). Case studies are Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia, which represent major, militarily-active powers in the region, that employ large, modern military organizations, and at the same time exhibit significant variance in factors that influence the choice of military doctrine. It illustrates how the three countries – though reacting differently to the evolving post-Arab Spring systemic threats – share the common denominator of adopting more offensive doctrines (See the "Israel Defense Forces Strategy," 2015; Khaled Al-Faisal, “A Saudi Defense Doctrine for a New Era,” 2015; Erik Olson, “Iran’s Path Dependent Military Doctrine,” 2016). It then moves to explain these doctrinal changes through testing hypotheses derived from the three established theoretical perspectives on the sources of military doctrine: balance-of-power theory, organization theory and cultural theory (See Barry Posen, "The Sources of Military Doctrine," 1984; Jack Snyder, "The Ideology of the Offensive," 1989; Elizabeth Kier, "Imagining War," 1997). The analysis reveals that while systemic imperatives are influential, they are not determinants of doctrinal change, which is a function of each state’s political culture and interests of its military organization(s). The Israeli doctrine, though it remains essentially offensive, included an important element of defense, due to a combination of hesitant political leadership and over-casualty sensitive public. The Saudi doctrine shifted from its traditional defensive character to an offensive one for the assertive ambitions of the new political leadership, embodied in the young Crown Prince. The Iranian doctrinal emphasis on offensive is attributed, at lease partly, to the institutional rivalries between the conventional military and the Revolutionary Guard. The paper presents a more complex reality than the one portrayed by conventional wisdom in the literature on Middle East military doctrines that mostly misperceives the subject country as a unitary actor whose choice is based solely on systemic factors. The paper therefore offers insights for important theory and policy recommendations.

One of the outstanding features of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), particularly in the Iranian perspective, was that the Islamic Republic was widely viewed as the more dangerous and aggressive of the belligerents despite the fact that Iraq initiated the conflict by invading Iran in September 1980. Both during and since the war, the policies of the Islamic Republic and the geopolitics of the Middle East have combined to produce the conception that Iran represents the primary threat to the security and stability of the region. The wartime policy that contributed most significantly to that conclusion was Iran’s 1982 invasion of Iraq. Several decades later, Iran’s decision to continue the war following the liberation of most of its territory remains a point of contention and misunderstanding. While for many analysts the decision exemplifies the aggression, irrationality, and ideological zeal that make the Islamic Republic so dangerous, serious attempts to uncover Iran’s motives have been lacking. In most cases the Iranian invasion has been interpreted as resulting from a combination of revolutionary overreach, the dogmatism of the regime’s hardline factions, and the oversized influence of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The evidence used to support the conclusion, meanwhile, has been far from robust, with most scholars relying on the memoirs of Iranian leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and a slew of non-Iranian sources. This paper complicates the prevailing wisdom regarding the Iranian invasion. It is based on research conducted for a book project that examines how the IRGC has documented the Iran-Iraq War. It focuses particularly on the IRGC’s Center for Holy Defense Documentation and Research (the Center), which is one of the most active Iranian research and publication institutions that deals with the Iran-Iraq War. The Center’s work, however, has largely been overlooked by scholars, and its significance has therefore remained understudied and underappreciated. Yet, as my research demonstrates, the work of the Center is of immense value for understanding Iran’s opaque decision-making process during the war. Indeed, for the IRGC the Iranian invasion was an act not of aggression but of defense. The decision to pursue the war’s original aggressors into their own territory, the IRGC accounts assert, was made carefully and rationally and only after the invasion was deemed necessary to restoring Iran’s national security. Dreams of marching straight through Iraq and onward to Jerusalem—though useful rhetorically to rally the troops—played no role in the decision-making process.

This paper analyses existing policies and policy challenges of natural gas exports by contextualizing them with historical, political and economic factors. The recent changes in the industry were buttressed by lifting the sanctions in 2016 that theoretically may propose a new, favorable environment for international investments in Iran and can lead to higher output and increasing exports of gas. In this respect, my aim is to analyze the economic and geopolitical opportunities offered by the expansion of Iranian gas industry in the post-sanctions era. For the analysis of the situation, I use production data of natural gas from the potentially rival countries of Iran as well as data on the prospects of consumption of hydrocarbons from the neighboring countries. This method helps identify the potential routes of gas exports of Iran by relying on the basic tenet of supply and demand. The amount of investment needed for creating new pipeline connections is a question to be considered as well. Beyond economic feasibility, however, lies the field of political feasibility of these export options, a factor that complicates the issue. My main statement is that the lifting of sanctions did not change the setup of the energeopolitical rivalries around Iran, on the contrary, it increased the existing tensions in the region. In order to understand Iran’s geopolitical environment that influences the exports of gas, an analysis of geopolitical factors (growing Chinese consumption, the role of shale gas) and interests of the parties involved is required. Considering the recent domestic prospects in the Iranian hydrocarbon sector, one should keep only the lower expectations concerning the expected production upsurge: external market tendencies (low oil price, oversupply in the oil and gas markets) strengthen the competition among producers of natural gas; most of them being in the proximity of Iran (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Qatar) and aiming at the same markets. However, there is a growth potential in the gas sector in Iran. According to certain estimations, the country will be able to export around 25 bcm gas within five years. The potential directions can be China, Pakistan and India as well as Turkey and Europe. Nevertheless, this amount will not be enough to meet the requirements of all three directions, still, the Iranian plan to reconnect its hydrocarbon industry to the global energy market will undoubtedly have a massive effect on the existing regional and global “energeopolitical” dynamics.

Militaries are known to be influenced by their country’s respective culture in terms of mindset, ideological goals, and sources of motivation. Military men, especially the rank and file, are motivated by ideals and values that are endeared by the civilians at large, are motivated by what also motivates a considerable part of the population, and think as average co-citizens do. The very structure of military organizations, however, is not expected to be influenced by varying cultural values, habits, and ideals, as standards of military efficiency are relatively global. I argue that by assuming and consolidating an unconventional organization through the Iran-Iraq War in a relatively successful manner, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) defied this pattern. The IRGC was initially established as a militia to maintain internal security after the 1979 revolution in Iran. It was neither equipped and trained, nor structured in the model of a classical Army to fight a conventional war. In the havoc that followed the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September1980, the IRGC became involved in the defense effort alongside the Iranian regular Army, but only unofficially and on a small scale. It was only one year later that the government finally recognized the IRGC as a military force to be deployed as the Iranian Army’s coequal and granted it more financial and political support. Relying on 35 in-depth interviews with IRGC veterans and officers, I demonstrate that even as it took the shape of a professional military, the IRGC preserved its particular cultural traits as the entity’s organizing principles. The informal structure that it had assumed by relying on preexisting religious networks continued to run the organization even under the pressure of a conventional battle. Leaders were respected not because of their rank, but based on their charismatic spirituality. Until the end of the war, as a matter of fact, insignias were not introduced into the IRGC. In addition, what kept the flow of volunteers, i.e. one of the IRGC’s winning cards, consistent despite the massive casualties was the fact that volunteers found the IRGC’s informal leadership and risky operational style more compatible with their ideal of Islamic brotherly love, whole-hearted dedication to the ideological cause, and revolutionary direct action—as opposed to the Army’s conservative, calculated treatment of the battle condition.