Arya News - Amid boiling tensions tensions and signs that a new US attack on Iran may be imminent, Sputnik reached out two two respected international relations and defense experts to outline the Islamic Republic`s response options.
Sustained Campaign“Iran’s most effective approach” to defense lies in “a layered, deniable pressure campaign rather than ‘one big strike’,” Lebanese American University associate professor Dr. Imad Salamey told Sputnik.But Iran’s biggest “strategic leverage comes from maritime and energy disruption” capabilities – namely, the ability to close down the Strait of Hormuz, and put pressure on the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait with the help of its Houthi allies.The country has a massive weapons “toolkit” with which to implement its “scalable, repeatable, and hard to fully stop” retaliatory campaign, Salamey said.This includes everything from drones, which are “cheap, numerous, hard to intercept at scale, and useful for saturating defenses,” to missiles and cruise missiles, which can be used to target American installations and hardware, plus asymmetric capabilities at sea (small attack boats, UAVs, mines and ship seizures), cyber and electronic warfare and allied rocket, drone and mortar attacks across the region.Massive RetaliationVeteran Russian military analyst Yuri Lyamin has another view, saying Tehran’s threats of full-scale retaliation against US assets across the Middle East are “the most viable strategy,” since “the US is not afraid of a limited exchange of strikes and has an intelligence advantage.”If it comes down to war, Iran has “thousands” of missiles and drones at its disposal, including vast stocks of tactical systems left virtually untouched during last June’s war, including systems like the Fateh-110, Fateh-313, Zolfaghar and Dezful, plus high-precision variants equipped with homing warheads for attacks on ships at sea.Longer-range capabilities include missiles like the Khaybar Shekan, its hypersonic variant Fattah-1, yjr Haj Qasem and its precision strike variant Qasem Basir.Iran’s cruise arsenal includes the inexpensive and simple Pahev series (1.5-2k km range), the anti-ship Ghader family and the shorter-range Nasr and Nasir series (<100 km).Drones include the Shahed series (Shahed-131, Shahed-136, the rocket-powered Shahed-238) etc.