Iran's Grand Strategy of Resistance in the Middle East: An Assessment through the Lens of Authoritarian Conflict Management

Over the past four decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued what has been described as a “Grand Strategy of Resistance” to preserve and consolidate its position as a regional power in the Middle East. Confronted by a hostile regional environment dominated by Sunni monarchies and facing military asymmetry vis-à-vis the United States and Israel, the Iranian leadership developed the doctrine of “forward defense” as a means of ensuring regime survival through deterrence rather than conventional military superiority. Initially conceived as a defensive strategy, it evolved into a transnational network of state and non-state partners, commonly known as the Axis of Resistance, enabling Iran to project influence across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine while minimizing the costs of direct confrontation. This dissertation examines the impact of Iran’s strategy on the achievement of the Islamic Republic’s strategic objectives in the Middle East. To answer this question, it adopts the theoretical framework of Authoritarian Conflict Management, which conceptualizes conflict not as a problem to be resolved but as a political instrument to be shaped and exploited in pursuit of strategic goals. Using the Gaza War as a critical case study, the dissertation argues that Iran’s strategy has been only partially successful. On the one hand, it enabled Tehran to expand its regional influence and consolidate its role as a pivotal actor through a network of allied state and non-state partners. On the other hand, the same mechanisms that strengthened Iran’s regional position also generated significant vulnerabilities, increasingly exposing the Islamic Republic to direct confrontation with its principal adversaries. The findings suggest that while Iran’s strategy constitutes an effective form of authoritarian conflict management in the short term, its long-term capacity to ensure regime security and regional stability remains uncertain.