فصلنامه راهبرد دفاعی
پیاپی 74 (تابستان 1400)

One of the requirements regarding acquisition of maritime authority is the adoption of a strategy based on the continuous presence in distant waters. This requires the development of a strategic model that meets the need for distant presence of dispatch convoys through establishing a naval base in one of the western Indian Ocean countries. To attain this purpose, this paper first discusses the importance of the Indian Ocean and then surveys the experiences of other countries, including trans-regional and regional countries regarding the establishment of a base in the western Indian Ocean. The present study is an applied-developmental one which used a case-field method. The temporal realm of this study is up to the horizon of 1414 and its spatial realm is the western Indian Ocean and its thematic realm also include the realm of naval power. The statistical population of the study is 49 individuals and library and survey methods were used to collect data. Data collection tools include articles, documents of organizations and academic websites, interviews and closed questionnaires. Regarding data analysis, SPSS and SmartPLS softwares were used for quantitative and factor analysis, respectively. As the results show, the researcher was able to explain the factors and strategic features effective in establishing offshore bases, identify obstacles and challenges of creating a naval base. Finally, he found eight effective dimensions in the creation of a naval base and identified a number of corresponding components for each dimension, regardless of which countries are the base and destination ones, important dimensions and components to provide a conceptual model of base creation.

Nowadays, the most developed cities are formed alongside the coasts of the seas and oceans, and there is an interrelationships between the existence and survival of these cities and sea-based development, and there exist a geo-economics approach on the coasts. Therefore, the southeastern coast of Iran (Makran coasts) connects the country to the oceanic structure and promotes its geopolitical weight and geo-economics functions. In this study, the main question is as the following: What are the defense and security challenges of sea-based development on the Makran coast from the perspective of political geography on a regional and international scale? In this respect, the method of this study was a descriptive survey (using a questionnaire based on Likert scale). The analysis obtained from this study was performed using SPSS-23 statistical software at two levels of descriptive and inferential statistics. The collected data in this paper represents some of the challenges (defense-security challenges at both regional and international scales) which are taken from the doctoral dissertation on the challenges of maritime development on Makran coasts from the perspective of political geography. The results show that the defense-security challenges on a regional scale with an average of 3.59 have a higher weight and average than the defense-security challenges on an international scale with an average of 3.50.

What we saw in the last months of 2019 and in the early months of 2020 as popular clashes in protest to corruption in Iraq and Lebanon, despite its appearance and the demands of the people of these countries in fight against corruption and the targeted assassinations of martyr Qasem Soleimani and martyr Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, and finally the explosion in the port of Beirut, which killed and injured thousands and left hundreds of thousands homeless, and finally the fall of the legitimate Lebanese government, are worrying and seem to be in order to make the resistance-oriented states dysfunctional and create social crises to disperse the member-oriented countries. The aim of this study was to explain the future situation of the resistance axis in the region with emphasis on social unrest in Iraq and Lebanon and the question is to identify the future situation of the resistance axis with emphasis on social unrest in these two countries. This study was conducted using a mixed method and the data were collected by reviewing the literature and interviewing experts using a questionnaire whose validity was assessed by the method of triangulation of experts and sources. The reliability of this instrument was done through using Cronbach's alpha. During the expert meetings, problem management strategies were analyzed. The results of the study showed the high and simultaneous impact of US regional policies, the high impact of the spread of terrorism, as well as the high impact of the policies of I.R. of Iran and the development of the resistance axis.

Based on the strategic literature, the challenges facing countries including I.R. of Iran in the domestic arena are the damages caused by internal weakness and in the external arena are threats. Internal damages are one of the main factors in stimulating and activating external threats. Thus, they are of great importance. Regarding domestic domain, a variety of factors and damages can cause insecurity, the most important of which are social turbulence. Considering the importance and necessity of the issue of unrest, ‌ this paper aimed to explain the process of formation of social unrest in I. R. of Iran. Its method was a case study with a quantitative approach and the method of its analysis was a descriptive-analytical one. To achieve the stated goal and answer the main question, i.e. what is the process of formation of social unrest in I. R. of Iran?, the researchers  using the library method, studied the authoritative Persian and English sources and extracted the necessary data and provided a four-stage process to explain the course of creating unrest. In order to validate the findings, researcher-made questionnaires were distributed among 30 experts familiar with security, political science and sociology as a statistical sample. The results show that social unrest in the country arises from the sequence of "disruption", "shock", "imbalance" and "impulse" and factors such as "unemployment, economic instability and devaluation of the national currency, increasing class gaps, low level of the existence of social capital rates, policies and plans of the enemy and their intelligence services in the field of overthrowing the system, infiltration and operation of infiltrators, destructive functioning of cyberspace, economic and political-administrative corruption, neglect of information society, weakness of some components of security culture will play a crucial role in this process.

As technology plays a key role in increasing national security and defense capabilities of countries, huge budgets are allocated to this sector. Thus, to make technological progress in commercial businesses and consequently the economic growth and development of their country, it is necessary for governments to pay special attention to commercial businesses with a strategic view of defense technology overflows to commercial businesses. The aim of this study was to identify the factors affecting the overflow of defense technologies to commercial businesses in Iran and to rank those factors. In the first phase, after reviewing the conducted research and extracting the initial indicators, a framework was developed for asking semi-structured interview questions with experts in this field. Then, by interviewing 13 experts who were selected through purposive sampling method (snowballing), 51 indigenous indicators were extracted in the frame of 7 factors. Then, the extracted indices were reviewed in an expert meeting involving 13 experts, and the output of the meeting which was a consensus pairwise comparison questionnaire was entered into a "super design" software. In the final step, the indicators were ranked using the Fuzzy Network Analysis Process (FANP). According to the experts' opinions and the results of the network analysis process, the policy and regulation factor was in the first place and then the communication factors, technological capability, external environment, human, financial and technological characteristics were in the next ranks. Therefore, it is suggested that managers and policy makers, in order to facilitate and systematize the process, pay special attention to the creation/reinforcement of policy and executive institutions in commercialization and overflow of defense technologies to create the necessary infrastructure and mediation units.