Iran, the Geography of Attrition and the New War of Corridors

Iran, the Geography of Attrition and the New War of Corridors

Why Tehran Is Weaker, but No Less Central

The temptation is strong: to look at Iran today, observe sanctions, oil difficulties, American military pressure, the rise of Turkey, the energy reorganization of the Gulf, and conclude that the Islamic Republic’s old geographic advantage is now in decline. It is an understandable interpretation, because it captures real elements. But it risks mistaking the transformation of Iranian power for its disappearance.

Iran is no longer the automatic beneficiary of its geographic position. This is clear. It is no longer enough to be located between the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Arab Middle East in order to generate power. It is no longer enough to threaten Hormuz to impose one’s agenda on others. It is no longer enough to invoke strategic depth to compensate for economic isolation. Geography alone no longer guarantees influence.

But from this to saying that Iran has lost centrality is too great a leap.

The truth is that Iranian geography has changed its nature. Previously, it was above all a positional rent. Today it is a rent of attrition. Previously, it allowed Iran to present itself as a hinge, a rear area, a bridge, a passage, a depth. Today it mainly allows Tehran to create risk, uncertainty, cost, diversion and instability. It is no longer a geography of connection, like Turkey’s. It is a geography of interdiction.

And in a world dominated by economic warfare, even obstruction is power.

The False Dilemma Between Decline and Invulnerability

The debate on Iran is often trapped in an excessively rigid alternative. On one side are those who still consider Tehran the master of an almost inevitable geopolitical destiny, as if the map alone were enough to guarantee influence. On the other are those who see Iran as an actor already heading toward marginalization, unable to compete with Turkish flexibility, the financial power of the Gulf, American and Israeli military superiority, and the pressure of sanctions.

Both readings capture part of reality, but neither is sufficient.

Iran is certainly weakened. It struggles to convert its position into wealth. Its energy sector is vulnerable. Its oil exports can be hit by naval, financial and insurance measures. The storage of unexported crude can become a production problem. Alternative infrastructure built by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Iraq reduces dependence on the Gulf. Turkey is occupying spaces that Tehran might once have aspired to control or condition.

But Iran is not irrelevant. It is economically weak, not strategically marginal. It is besieged, not neutralized. It is less able to profit from its geography, but still able to impose extremely high costs on others. This is the decisive point.

Power does not only consist in producing flows. It also consists in being able to disrupt them.

Hormuz: It Does Not Need to Be Closed in Order to Be Used

The Strait of Hormuz remains the most obvious symbol of this transformation. For a long time it was described as Iran’s great lever: if Tehran were attacked or strangled, it could threaten the passage through which a crucial share of world energy transits. Today many observers argue that this lever has weakened. Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Iraq are seeking alternative routes; the Emirati terminal of Fujairah makes it possible to export while partially bypassing Hormuz; the Saudi pipeline to Yanbu connects the oil-producing east to the Red Sea; Baghdad aims to revive the Kirkuk-Ceyhan axis and develop new land routes; the Gulf is investing in infrastructure designed to reduce the vulnerability of the strait.

All true. But this is precisely where the paradox lies.

If everyone is building alternatives to Hormuz, it means Hormuz still matters. No one spends enormous amounts of capital to bypass an irrelevant point. Diversification does not prove the end of the strait’s centrality. It proves fear of its centrality.

Iran does not necessarily need to close Hormuz to exercise power. In fact, closing it completely would be an extreme, risky and perhaps even counterproductive choice. It would be an act of open war, capable of provoking a devastating military response and damaging Iranian and Chinese interests as well. The true strength of Hormuz lies not in its total closure, but in the credible threat of its instability.

Incidents, seizures, limited attacks, drones, mines, exercises, ambiguous declarations and naval tensions are enough to alter market behavior. Insurance premiums rise. Maritime transport costs increase. Companies recalculate risks. Asian importers demand guarantees. Western navies reinforce their presence. Gulf monarchies accelerate alternatives. Investors demand higher returns to expose themselves to the region.

In this sense, Hormuz is less a gate to be closed than a multiplier of risk. And Iran, even when it does not fully control it, remains one of the actors most capable of transforming that space into strategic uncertainty.

The Geoeconomics of Fear

Contemporary economic warfare is not fought only through tariffs, sanctions, embargoes or financial blockades. It is also fought through the manipulation of risk. Whoever manages to increase the insurance cost of a route, make a logistics chain less secure, or render an infrastructure investment less predictable exercises power.

Iran has lost part of its ability to attract flows. But it retains the ability to condition the flows of others. This is its new geoeconomic rent.

Its territory, its coasts, its proximity to the Gulf, its residual influence in Iraq, its relations with regional armed networks, its missile and drone capabilities, and the strategic depth accumulated over decades of siege make Tehran an actor that can rarely impose an order, but can often prevent its consolidation.

This is the most important feature: Iran is not an ordering power. It is a disruptive power. It does not build the new regional architecture by itself, but it can make it very difficult to build one against it.

This is the difference between positive power and negative power. Positive power builds, finances, connects and integrates. Negative power blocks, delays, complicates and raises the price. Turkey, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia increasingly aspire to the first kind of power. Iran, under current conditions, mainly exercises the second.

But the second is no less real than the first.

Turkey as a Power of Connection

The rise of Turkey is one of the most important facts of the current phase. Ankara has managed to do what Tehran has failed to do: transform its geography into a permanent negotiating platform. Turkey is inside NATO but talks to Russia; it supports Ukraine but does not completely break with Moscow; it looks to Turkic Central Asia while maintaining relations with the Gulf; it is present in the Caucasus, Libya, the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Balkans and Africa.

Turkish geography has become a diplomatic machine.

Pipelines, ports, bases, drones, military industry, mediation, control of the straits, projection into the Caucasus, influence over the Levant, neo-Ottoman ambition and economic pragmatism all hold together. Ankara monetizes its position because it is autonomous enough to negotiate with everyone, but sufficiently integrated into the Western system not to be excluded from it. It is uncomfortable, but not expelled. Ambiguous, but indispensable. At times revisionist, but negotiable.

Iran does not enjoy this elasticity. It is subjected to structural sanctions, excluded from a significant part of the international financial system, perceived by the United States and Israel as a strategic threat, and surrounded by rival or suspicious powers. For this reason it cannot transform its position into a logistical and financial platform as Turkey has done.

Ankara is a power of passage. Tehran is a power of attrition.

Ankara profits from circulation. Tehran survives by conditioning it.

Ankara offers corridors. Tehran reminds everyone that every corridor has a strategic cost.

This does not mean that Turkey has replaced Iran. It means that the two powers perform different functions. One facilitates flows. The other can disrupt them. One presents itself as a hub. The other remains a fault line. One accumulates geopolitical dividends. The other retains coercive capacity.

Alternative Corridors and the Iranian Paradox

The broader Middle East is trying to redesign its communication routes. There is talk of pipelines, railways, ports, land corridors, connections between the Gulf and the Mediterranean, routes through Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Red Sea. Behind every infrastructure lies a geopolitical calculation: reducing vulnerability, escaping chokepoints, diversifying exports, attracting investment, integrating markets, containing uncertainty.

Iraq is a central case. It depends enormously on oil revenues. If exports through the Gulf are hit, the Iraqi state enters crisis. This is why Baghdad is seeking to revive routes toward Turkey, studying new internal pipelines, looking for alternative outlets and opening space for Chinese capital. But every new Iraqi route is not only an economic project. It is also a choice of positioning between Iran, Turkey, the Gulf, China and the United States.

The same applies to the Emirates. Fujairah is not only an oil terminal. It is a strategic declaration: Abu Dhabi wants to reduce its exposure to Hormuz. Saudi Arabia, with its connection to Yanbu, reasons in the same way: shifting part of its vulnerability from the Gulf to the Red Sea. But the Red Sea, in turn, has become unstable because of the Yemeni crisis, attacks on ships, competition among external powers and the militarization of the Horn of Africa.

This proves an essential point: bypassing a vulnerability does not mean eliminating it. It often means moving it elsewhere.

Dependence on Hormuz is reduced, but dependence on other unstable spaces increases. Turkey is strengthened, but a new dependence on Ankara is created. China is involved, but another level of competition with the United States is opened. Land routes are built, but land routes cross fragile states, divided societies, porous borders and areas exposed to sabotage and conflict.

For this reason, Iran does not disappear from the map. Even when it is bypassed, it remains present as the reason for the bypass.

Oil as an Internal Vulnerability

Iran’s real weakness is the economic conversion of its geographic potential. Here the criticism of the old myth of Iranian geography is well-founded. A strategic position is of little use if it does not generate revenues, technology, investment, productive capacity and industrial modernization.

If Iranian oil cannot get out, geographic rent is reduced. If crude remains in terminals or tankers used as floating storage, pressure on the system increases. If storage capacity approaches saturation, Tehran may be forced to reduce production. Reducing production, in a complex oil sector, is never a neutral choice. It can damage fields, create technical costs, reduce fiscal revenues and fuel internal tensions.

This is Iran’s Achilles’ heel. Not geography itself, but the inability to transform it steadily into development.

Sanctions have produced an adaptive, resistant economy capable of survival, but not prosperity. Iran has learned to evade, triangulate, sell at discounts, use intermediaries, develop informal circuits and rely on Asian partners. But surviving does not mean growing. And resilience is not a development strategy.

Tehran can resist much longer than is often believed. But prolonged resistance has a price: technological impoverishment, capital flight, industrial difficulties, social frustration, reduced ability to attract skills and growing dependence on a few partners.

The Iranian paradox is this: its geography continues to make it strategically necessary, but its isolation prevents it from extracting all possible economic benefits from that geography.

Russia and China: Support, Not Salvation

Moscow and Beijing are decisive for Iran, but not in the naïve way often imagined. There is no blank Russian or Chinese cheque in favor of Tehran. Russia has its own problems, its own war, its own sanctions and its own priorities. China buys energy, invests where it is convenient, seeks stability in routes, and does not want to be dragged into a regional war.

Beijing has an interest in an Iran that does not collapse, but not necessarily in an Iran that is too aggressive. It wants low-cost energy, secure corridors, balance in the Gulf, access to Arab markets, and relations with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. China will not easily sacrifice its relations with the Gulf for Tehran.

Russia, for its part, sees Iran as a useful partner in the challenge to the West. Military cooperation, drones, technology, diplomatic convergence, opposition to the American order: all this matters. But Moscow cannot by itself transform Iran into a prosperous economic power.

Yet precisely this ambiguity confirms Iranian centrality. Russia and China do not necessarily want a dominant Iran. But they do not want an Iran neutralized by the United States either. A living, resistant, problematic Iran forces Washington to remain engaged in the Middle East, disperses Western resources, creates pressure on Israel and the Gulf, and prevents the full stabilization of the American order in the region.

Iran, therefore, is useful to Moscow and Beijing not only for what it can offer, but for what it can prevent.

Once again: negative power.

Strategic Depth After Missiles and Drones

Another mistake is to believe that new military technologies have erased strategic depth. It is true that drones, precision missiles, satellites, electronic warfare, cyberattacks and real-time intelligence reduce the protective value of space. Today one can strike in depth much more easily than in the past. Energy infrastructure, command centers, depots, nuclear facilities and military bases are more vulnerable.

But striking does not mean controlling.

The United States learned this in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel knows it well in wars against non-state actors. Technological superiority can destroy targets, but it does not guarantee political order. It can degrade military capabilities, but it does not always break strategic will. It can win battles, but not necessarily build a stable balance.

Iran remains a large, mountainous, populous country, with dispersed infrastructure, redundant military capabilities and a state apparatus accustomed to clandestinity and survival under pressure. It is not invulnerable. But it is not easily neutralized either. Its depth is no longer an absolute shield. It is a network of absorption. It can suffer blows, but it makes it difficult to transform those blows into definitive political victory.

This is one of the elements that prevents Iran from being considered an actor of the past.

Israel, the United States and the Cost of Neutralization

Those who argue that Iranian centrality is declining should answer a simple question: if Iran were truly marginal, why do the United States, Israel, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey, Russia and China continue to calculate their regional choices also in relation to Tehran?

The answer is obvious. Iran may be weakened, but truly neutralizing it would have enormous costs. A large-scale military attack could set the Gulf on fire, activate regional networks, strike American bases, destabilize Iraq, raise the price of oil, involve Israel, push China to recalibrate its energy posture and produce effects on global markets.

The Iranian problem is not only what Tehran does. It is what could happen if Tehran were pushed beyond a certain threshold.

This is deterrence. Not always elegant, not always symmetrical, not always controllable. But deterrence nonetheless.

Iran does not need to win a conventional war against the United States. It only needs to make that war too costly, too long, too unpredictable, too destabilizing. Iranian power does not lie in the ability to defeat its adversary frontally, but in the ability to deny it an easy victory.

Here again we are faced with the geography of attrition.

The New Meaning of Iranian Centrality

Iranian centrality in the past was different. It was based on a combination of territory, oil, revolution, ideological networks, regional depth, militant alliances, hostility to the West and influence in the Levant. That centrality is now under pressure. Hezbollah is no longer only a lever, but also a vulnerable front. Syria has changed. Iraq is contested. Yemen is a multiplier of instability, but also a risk factor. Iran’s nuclear program is a strategic card, but also a permanent source of escalation.

Iran no longer exercises the same regional expansion as it did a few years ago. But it remains the country without which no regional stabilization is fully possible. It cannot build the new Middle East by itself, but it can help prevent one being built against it.

This is a different centrality: more defensive, darker, less profitable. But real.

The decisive question is no longer: can Iran dominate the region? The answer is no.

The real question is: can the region stabilize while ignoring Iran? Here too the answer is no.

Conclusion: Not Decline, but a Mutation of Power

Iran has entered a new phase. It is no longer the uncontested custodian of an automatic geographic advantage. It can no longer assume that its position alone produces influence. Turkey challenges it as a corridor power. The Gulf bypasses it with alternative infrastructure. The United States strangles it with military, financial and naval tools. Israel strikes its networks and studies its vulnerabilities. Russia and China use it, but do not save it. The domestic economy remains fragile.

But none of this amounts to marginality.

Iran retains a form of power that is more difficult to measure, but decisive: the ability to make unstable what others would like to make fluid. It may not fully control flows, but it can condition them. It may not attract large amounts of capital, but it can force others to spend billions to avoid it. It may not dominate Hormuz, but it can make it a permanent variable in global energy calculations. It may not be a prosperous economic power, but it remains a geopolitical power of disruption.

This is the heart of the matter.

Iranian geography is no longer enough to produce positive power. But it continues to produce negative power. It does not guarantee prosperity, but it guarantees relevance. It does not allow Tehran to order the region, but it allows it to prevent the region’s full normalization against its interests.

For this reason, speaking simply of decline is reductive. We must speak instead of the conflictual transformation of Iran’s geographic advantage. Tehran gains less from its position, but it continues to make others pay a very high price for the ambition of neutralizing it.

In the century of corridors, sanctions, energy routes, critical infrastructure and indirect wars, this capacity remains a concrete form of power.