For millennia, Iran’s geography has been a cornerstone of its geopolitical strength, but at critical junctures also its Achilles heel. Time and space are the factors that have shaped the Iranian identity and at the same time generate the conditions that threaten the country’s national security. Geography is the percolator for generational grievances against foreign machinations and interventions. Abuse by world powers has loomed large in Iran’s threat narratives and perceptions. The chapter argues that Tehran’s threat perceptions have evolved over the years and Iranians have shown a remarkable ability to adapt their doctrine and posture in response.

Cyber warfare plays a major role in Iran’s asymmetric defense strategy. Since the early 2000s, the Iranian government has invested substantial resources in both defensive and offensive cyber capabilities and has demonstrated a willingness to and relative effectiveness in using these capabilities against its opponents both at home and abroad. Iran’s presence in cyberspace has played a central role in the country’s domestic and foreign policies strategies. Cyber tools have enabled Tehran to address domestic threats to the sanctity of the Islamic regime while simultaneously providing an offensive toolkit aimed at punishing its regional and international adversaries.

The Iranian state is a complex political machine. Today’s Iran is a product of the combined forces of evolutionary change and abrupt political upheavals. The Iranian state is remarkable for its longevity and its combination of traditional and modern (Western) features, which has resulted from its long and varied life. The Islamic Republic is a product of a series of political compromises that have their origins partly in the bureaucracy created by the Pahlavis and partly in the interactions of the revolutionary coalition that wrested power from the monarch in 1979.

For millennia, Iran’s leaders have seen a powerful military as the major guarantor of the country’s independence. In this context, self-reliance has been considered the best strategy for providing the armed forces with the space to act as an independent arm of the state and for defending the nation’s interests overseas. The chapter examines the evolution of Iran’s military–industrial complex from the early twentieth century to the present. The analysis suggests that the Islamic Republic has successfully established itself as a major manufacturer of arms in the Global South. Iran’s long experience with strategic isolation has further fueled the momentum for self-reliance in defense. Essentially, Tehran has no other option but to develop indigenous military capabilities.

This chapter shows that, under the Pahlavi monarchy, the country had one of, if not the, best-equipped and best-trained military in the Middle East and North Africa region. In this chapter, the focus is on how the Imperial Armed Forces changed following the revolution. Attention is drawn to the structure of the Islamic Republic’s military machine and to the historical and strategic forces that have come to determine the shape, doctrine, and capabilities of the country’s armed forces. The impact of the revolution itself on the armed forces was significant, compounded by the role-defining war with Iraq (1980–8). As a consequence of developments since 1979, the Sepah has emerged as the republic’s most powerful fighting force, the establishment’s trusted weapon against domestic dissent, and the regime’s leading weapon in regional conflicts. This centrality is largely attributed to the IRGC Command Network.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Iran was a victim of a foreign power (Soviet Union) using ethnic groups (Kurds and Azeris) as proxies in efforts to destabilize the country. Ironically, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Shah used the same tactic against Iran’s regional adversaries by cultivating ties with the Kurds in Iraq and the Shia communities of Lebanon. After the 1979 revolution, supporting proxies has become a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s security doctrine and its regional policy. Indeed, the republic’s network of proxies is an essential part of Tehran’s asymmetric warfare strategy and has been extensively used for both offensive and defensive purposes.

This chapter examines Iran’s ballistic missiles and space program. It provides a historical background to the program from the Shah’s initiatives to the present. Given that the Islamic Republic has been under a strict arms embargo for decades, the power of its air force in particular has deteriorated significantly. Iranian military leaders have invested military and human resources in building and developing strong missile and space capabilities to make up for this weakness. Initially, Tehran relied on foreign assistance, particularly from China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, but it has developed significant indigenous capabilities since the 1980s. The chapter compares Iran’s extensive missile and space program with the leading militaries of the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

This chapter explains the importance of the phase of pre-conflict mobilisation for insurgent groups subsequent development. The chapter empirically presents the fallout from the 1971 coup and the tumultuous decade that followed. It explains the various violent tendencies in 1970s Turkey: the Right, the Left, Kurdish movements and the state. It tracks the emergence of the PKK from the socialist revolutionary milieu in Ankara, through its return to Kurdistan and its eventual consolidation as one of the region's most dominant revolutionary groups. It gives a substantial empirical overview of the multitude of Kurdish movements’ mobilization in the late 1970s. It lays out how the PKK overcame its weaknesses (lack of local legitimacy and resources) through a patient strategy of recruitment and calculated use of violence against local enemies. It then explains the impact of the 1980 military coup and the brutal repression of the Kurdish region. It discusses the deployment of state torture and terror and how Diyarbakir prison and the resistance by PKK prisoners became a rallying point for the weakened PKK. It finishes by outlining the PKK’s steps to prepare for the 1984 insurgency.

I met Mizgîn on a warm spring afternoon in a refugee camp in Switzerland. Mizgîn had been a member of the PKK for twenty-four years, spending her last years in the party as a top KCK commander. In spring 2017, she left the party and fled to Europe. A mutual friend and fellow former commander had arranged our meeting, and over many cigarettes and cups of tea, we told each other our stories, discussed the state of the world, and the women’s questions that not only plague the four parts of Kurdistan. With great sadness in her eyes and many deep sighs, Mizgîn told me about how she joined the party as a teenager, her time spent in Syria with Öcalan, her many years of struggle, her increasing doubts, and that seeing how things were run at the very top, particularly in relation to the urban wars in 2015–2016, finally gave her the impetus to leave. At a different table on the terrace another asylum seeker was playing sad PKK revolutionary songs on his baglama.1 Mizgîn nodded in his direction and indicated that we should keep our voices down.

This chapter questions the urban/rural distinction, given that in times of conflict and demographic volatility, borders between urban and rural are diminished and events in the countryside shape those of the city and vice versa. Accordingly, it considers the impact of Turkish security forces’ counterinsurgency strategy of mass forced displacement not only on rural areas but also how it reconfigured Kurdish urban centres. It outlines the implementation of the forced evacuation of potentially millions of rural Kurds in order to deprive the PKK of its local support networks. The chapter shows the emotional trauma and the violence of the experiences, which led to the relocation of PKK support from the countryside to the cities. It also addresses the disaggregated strategies of state repression, particularly the so-called deep state that operated outside of any form of democratic accountability. The chapter also covers the state’s relationship with an Islamist movement, Hezbollah, used to target Kurdish intellectuals and politicians and to analyses how the PKK mobilised in Kurdish cities, focusing in particular on Serhildans (Uprisings), Newroz celebrations and guerrilla funerals.

Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of the Kurdish region, its peoples and its historic experience in the Turkish Republic since the 1920s. It describes the multiple peoples of the region, including Kurds, Turks, Alevis, Yezidis and Syriacs before discussing its linguistic heterogeneity. It proceeds to outline the emergence of Kurdish Nationalism in the early twentieth century, and how Kurdish political forces were confronted by the Turkish Nationalism of the early Republic. It discusses the Kurdish rebellions of the 1920s and 1930s and the violent state reaction. It finishes by describing some of the socio-economic and political transformations which changed the country in the 1940s and 1950s such as industrialisation and the installation of a form of electoral democracy. It explains how the unintended consequences of the state presence in Kurdistan led to the formation of an educated class of young Kurds with the social capital required to lead a Kurdish cultural and political rival from the 1950s.