Holy Defense Studies

Abstract During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, the Strategic Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (IRIN) played a critical and strategic role in securing maritime routes, protecting the country’s economic lifelines, countering enemy naval forces, and asserting national sovereignty. This study, using a descriptive-analytical approach and based on both field and documentary sources, examines the IRIN’s performance during the war and analyzes its tactical, logistical, intelligence, and psychological dimensions. The findings reveal that the IRIN, through operations such as Morvarid, the escorting of oil tankers, and defense of key islands in the Persian Gulf, dealt severe blows to the Iraqi Navy and maintained the continuity of Iran’s energy exports. Moreover, the commitment of naval personnel, inter-force coordination, and operational initiative were among the key factors contributing to its success. This paper evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the IRIN and concludes that its performance during the war laid the groundwork for Iran’s naval doctrine and serves as a model for safeguarding national interests in the maritime domain.

Abstract The emergence of hybrid threats—including simultaneous physical, cyber, cognitive, and internal infiltration attacks—has fundamentally challenged traditional national defense structures. The hybrid assault launched by the Zionist regime against Iran's military and critical infrastructure on June 13, 2025, with comprehensive support from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and certain Arab states, stands as a prominent example of multidimensional aggression. This event exposed the ineffectiveness of conventional deterrence doctrines and underscored the urgent need for a future-oriented and indigenous defense-security paradigm.

This qualitative and foresight-oriented study aims to develop a novel defensive-security doctrine tailored to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s national context in the face of hybrid warfare. Employing structural analysis (MICMAC) and Delphi techniques, key security variables and their causal–influence relationships were identified, leading to the design of an intelligent, multilayered, and integrated national security system. The cross-impact matrix analysis revealed that variables such as command integration, multi-layered early warning systems, active cyber deterrence, narrative cognition management, public participation, and internal defense play pivotal roles in reshaping the defense-security architecture.

Findings indicate that achieving sustainable national security in the era of hybrid wars requires a proactive, network-based, and perception-oriented doctrine—one grounded in institutional coordination, cognitive resilience, public readiness, and rapid decision-making. The proposed conceptual model defines security not as a static structure but as a dynamic, adaptive, and responsive system capable of aligning with emerging threats and future scenarios.

Abstract This study employs a hybrid content analysis (qualitative and quantitative) to identify, classify, and evaluate the factors contributing to the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War. It compares the perspectives of Iranian, Iraqi, and Western researchers, including political officials, military commanders, and academics. Findings reveal that the war resulted from the interaction of 18 multilevel factors, encompassing territorial, geopolitical, ideological, security, psychological, and international dimensions. A comparative analysis highlights significant differences in priorities. Iranian perspectives emphasize Iraq's pursuit of "leadership over the region and the Arab world" and the "Iran-US conflict." Iraqi views focus on "Iran's structural weakness" and the "potential collapse or weakening of the revolutionary regime." Western scholars prioritize the "threat to the survival of Saddam and the Ba'ath Party" and the "ideological conflict between the regimes."However, factors such as "leadership of the region and the Arab world," "Iraq's geopolitical constraints," "the threat to the survival of Saddam and the Ba'ath Party," and "the ideological conflict between political systems" held the highest coefficient of influence across all three groups. The results conclude that the Iran-Iraq War was not the product of a single factor but a complex interplay of individual leader calculations, ideological contradictions, geopolitical rivalries, and international power considerations, underscoring the need for preventive diplomacy and proactive tension management to avoid similar conflicts.

Abstract This study aims to explain the factors influencing the participation of rural border communities in the northwest of Iran in national defense, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of the Sacred Defense (Iran-Iraq War). The research employs a descriptive-analytical method with a quantitative and field-based approach. The statistical population includes households residing in 124 border villages across the provinces of West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, and Ardabil. Using a simple random sampling method and Cochran’s formula, 377 households were selected as the sample. Data were collected through a researcher-made questionnaire and analyzed using Smart PLS software and structural equation modeling (SEM). The study examined geographical, economic-livelihood, managerial-political, and socio-cultural dimensions as influential factors. The results indicated that the geographical, economic-livelihood, and managerial-political dimensions had the strongest and most significant positive effects on rural communities' participation in national defense, whereas the socio-cultural dimension showed weaker and, in some cases, negative correlations. The geographical index, with the highest path coefficient, played a major role in sensitizing and motivating rural residents toward defensive participation. Additionally, the economic-livelihood index, due to its direct link with subsistence and economic security, emerged as a key motivational driver. Based on these findings, strengthening infrastructure and implementing supportive economic and managerial policies—alongside re-evaluating socio-cultural strategies—can foster sustainable participation in national defense. These results hold strategic value for policymakers and development planners in border regions and can contribute to enhancing community resilience and grassroots defense.

Abstract By raising the question of what effect the values ​​of sacred defense have had on promoting the position of the resistance axis, this research has expressed the hypothesis that institutionalizing the process of transferring the values ​​and norms of sacred defense has a direct relationship with strengthening the resistance axis, and one of the important and vital values ​​of the Islamic Republic of Iran system that must be properly and continuously spread among all people in this country is resistance and the culture of sacred defense. After collecting data and conducting analysis, the findings of the present research show that the development of sacred defense values, from the perspective of the general elements of power, creating proximity and strategic depth, the ability to create immediate threats, and creating aggressive intentions against the rival and enemy front in order to promote the resistance front, has had a positive effect and is capable of creating. Multi-vectorization of the layers of relations within the context of the axis of resistance with an emphasis on activating the economic and cultural capacity, consolidating the military and defensive power of the axis of resistance at the regional level, moving from a purely security perspective in the field towards political-security initiatives, deepening the level of cooperation between regional allies with major trans-regional powers, and adopting optimal operational measures to confront threats and the enemy's aggressive approach, including the increasing trend of normalizing relations between the Zionist regime and regional countries, are among the most important requirements of the Iranian People's Republic in the axis of resistance.

Abstract One of the approaches in critical geopolitics involves the differential meaning-making of geopolitical phenomena by individuals, political parties, and states, grounded in their respective identity-based and discursive origins. Within this framework, the year 1980 ushered in a significant intensification of military hostilities along the Iran–Iraq border, culminating in the onset of an all-out war between the two countries. At this historical juncture, the geopolitical reading of the crisis most notably the construction of meaning surrounding the concept of Iran’s territorial integrity and the underlying justifications for its defense against the Ba‘athist Iraq’s aggression evolved into a profound ideological contestation among three competing discourses within Iran: liberal nationalism, Marxist leftism, and the Islamic Revolution. This study seeks to examine the concept of Iran’s territoriality through the lens of the Islamic Revolution’s discourse, employing an interpretive methodology within the framework of constructivist theory. Research findings reveal that, within the discursive framework of the Islamic Revolution The construction of meaning regarding Iran’s territoriality during the war with Iraq was prioritized on the basis of a religious genealogy, primarily through analogies with the wars of the Prophet of Islam and the Shi‘a Imams in the early Islamic era. Accordingly, Iran’s territorial borders were explicitly construed as the locus of the resurrection of authentic Islam and conceptualization of Iran’s territoriality within the nation-state framework did not achieve epistemic centrality. through the Islamically revolutionary discourse’s anti-Western orientation, the geopolitical rationale for defending Iran’s territorial integrity was framed within the dichotomy between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Kufr.