The expansion of the war beyond the military domain into the economic sphere reflects a carefully calibrated Iranian strategy of economic coercion to prevail in war in the wake of minimal prospects of success in conventional warfighting, writes Hamdan Khan, Research Officer at Strategic Vision Institute, Pakistan.
The war between Iran and the US and Israel underscores a major departure from how wars have traditionally been fought. While the kinetic operations—the US and Israeli strikes against Iran’s land and sea targets and Tehran’s counter-strikes against Israel and across the Gulf—have garnered most attention, they no longer constitute the primary theatre of the ongoing war. Instead, Iran has expanded the conflict beyond the traditional battlefield to encompass economic coercion with attacks on energy facilities, commercial infrastructure, and the disruption of the global commons. The expansion of the war beyond the military domain into the economic sphere reflects a carefully calibrated Iranian strategy of economic coercion to prevail in war in the wake of minimal prospects of success in conventional warfighting.
At the heart of Iran’s non-conventional approach lies the strategic compulsion of military asymmetry. Faced with an existential threat from two overwhelmingly superior
adversaries leveraging sophisticated intelligence networks and employing devastating firepower, traditional warfighting offers little chance for Iran to impose costs on its adversaries to dissuade them. Hence, they have turned to expanding the theatre of the conflict beyond the traditional battlefield into the economic realm as a more viable approach. In doing so, Iran seeks to raise the costs for the world economy in general and US consumers in particular to the extent that the war becomes politically and economically unsustainable for the Trump administration.
The blockade
of the Strait of Hormuz—arguably the most critical energy bottleneck in the world—constitutes the central pillar of Iran’s strategy of economic coercion. By disrupting maritime traffic through the narrow waterway, which enables roughly 20% of global energy shipments to be conducted, Tehran has effectively weaponised its geography to create a global energy shockwave. It has also attacked
key energy
facilities in the Gulf, which may not be able to resume production in the near future. The fallout is immediate and shocking for the global economy: energy markets have experienced acute volatility, energy prices have surged
sharply, and supply chain disruptions have created energy shortages in countries which are dependent on Gulf imports.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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