Iran: Holding the Door Shut?

My latest at the National Interest takes a look at Iran’s anti-access systems:

Iran’s anti-access systems have trailed those of Russia and China, but in some sense are more interesting than developments in the two larger countries. The idea that Russia or China, continental powers with massive defense-industrial bases and huge economies, should have the military wherewithal to deny military access to the United States is not, in itself, all that remarkable. Only the extraordinary dominance of the United States over the past twenty-five years has made the question of anti-access/area denial remotely interesting.

But Iran, a medium-sized country with access to enormous energy resources, is not one of the world’s wealthiest or most powerful nations. If a country like Iran can develop an anti-access system sufficient to deter the United States, then the balance of offensive and defensive technology has surely shifted.

One of the conclusions I came to in writing this article is that Iran’s conventional military is extremely weak. The gap between Iranian and Vietnamese capabilities is really quite large; the Iranians have more and better ballistic missiles, but the Vietnamese have huge advantages in every other area. Decades of sanctions have really taken a toll.