Partition 1947: PARTITION or UNITY? BENGAL in 1947

The Daily Star  |  Sugata Bose

Sarat Chandra Bose and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy led a final, failed effort in May 1947 to preserve Bengal's unity through an equitable power-sharing arrangement between religious communities. Backed initially by Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the proposal was ultimately vetoed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, prompting Lord Mountbatten to execute the June 3 partition plan.

On June 20, 1947, East Bengal legislators rejected partition 106 to 35, while West Bengal members approved it 58 to 21, ratifying territorial vivisection under colonial provisions. Subsequent border demarcation by Sir Cyril Radcliffe—announced on August 17, 1947, two days after independence—ignited widespread sectarian violence, causing nearly two million deaths and displacing fourteen million refugees across newly carved borders. This territorial division prioritized centralized state power in post-colonial India and Pakistan over regional federalism, creating long-term center-periphery friction and leaving complex enclave disputes unresolved until the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement.

Top US admiral says no nation will dominate Indo-Pacific

AP News

Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, declared that no single nation will dominate the Indo-Pacific region, reaffirming Washington’s commitment to preserving a free and open international order. Speaking on security dynamics across the South China Sea and broader theater on August 3, 2026, the senior military leader emphasized collective deterrence alongside regional allies to counter unilateral coercion.

This strategic stance addresses heightened geopolitical tensions, maritime territorial disputes, and naval friction between competing powers operating within crucial maritime transit corridors. Multi-nation defense partnerships, joint naval exercises, and enhanced security arrangements serve as core operational frameworks to ensure freedom of navigation and regional stability. By reinforcing alliance networks, the United States aims to balance posture against expanding regional force projection without triggering direct conflict. Sustained military presence and institutional coordination remain pivotal as defense planners monitor ongoing force deployments, strategic maneuvers, and operational readiness across critical Indo-Pacific sea lanes.

ASEAN winners and losers in the era of the Hormuz crisis

Asia Times  |  Chris Taylor

The Strait of Hormuz closure severely disrupted Southeast Asian economies, exposing divergent vulnerabilities across the region as energy costs spiked. Indonesia’s rupiah plunged past 1997 crisis levels due to escalating crude import bills, while the Philippines declared a national energy emergency under Executive Order 110 after pump prices doubled relative to neighboring states.

Lacking a strategic petroleum reserve or modernized grid, Manila suffered extreme economic disruption, leaving transit operators striking as fuel costs surged. Conversely, landlocked Laos sustained a 100% diesel price hike before mitigating shortages through a bilateral fuel-for-hydropower agreement with Thailand alongside prospective Russian petroleum shipments routed via Vietnamese ports. Meanwhile, Thailand bolstered its energy resilience and leveraged Chinese military hardware acquisitions, including tanks and submarines, to manage concurrent border friction with Cambodia. Ultimately, regional stability relied less on isolated fuel stockpiles and more on established inter-state dependencies and strategic bilateral trade relationships during external shocks.

The numbers game: why the US is losing ground to China in the first island chain

South China Morning Post  |  Gabriel Dominguez

China’s People’s Liberation Army is rapidly accelerating operational capabilities toward its 2027 centenary benchmark, threatening to dismantle long-standing United States defense lines across the strategic first island chain. On August 1, 2026, marking its 99th anniversary, the PLA intensified efforts to project localized power and expand operational dominance throughout its near-seas island arc.

This growing numerical deployment and systemic military modernization by Beijing are steadily eroding traditional American deterrence capabilities in the Western Pacific region. Defense analysts emphasize that China's accelerating progress toward establishing a world-class military poses a direct challenge to long-term United States regional commitments and maritime security frameworks. Furthermore, the combination of localized combat mass and geographic proximity continues to alter the theater balance of power along critical maritime chokepoints. As the 2027 deadline approaches, Washington faces mounting strategic pressure to adapt its force structure against Beijing’s expanding near-seas strategic footprint.

China Moves to Lock in a New Edge on Taiwan Before the Next Trump-Xi Summit

The Diplomat  |  Di Lu

The China Coast Guard established a regularized law enforcement presence in the waters east of Taiwan starting June 1, 2026, to assert Beijing's jurisdictional claims and secure geopolitical leverage ahead of upcoming diplomatic summits. This deployment exploits overlapping exclusive economic zone claims between Japan and the Philippines to create a de facto maritime encirclement of the island.

Historically, these eastern waters served as a low-pressure rear area for Taiwanese defense, but the 2018 integration of the maritime agency into the Central Military Commission transformed it into a highly militarized gray-zone instrument. By substituting overt naval maneuvers with police-led patrols, the Chinese leadership maintains a peaceful reunification narrative while establishing a functional blockade capability. This incremental expansion tests the United States' First Island Chain strategy, leaving Washington to quietly urge security cooperation between Tokyo and Manila. Ultimately, these patrols lay the groundwork for future maritime quarantines and vessel interceptions.

Chinese Research Details Distillation for Military Use

Jamestown Foundation | Sunny Cheung

Chinese artificial intelligence firms and military researchers are systematically distilling Western frontier models to bypass safety guardrails and rapidly advance domestic capabilities. This adversarial distillation targets complex chain-of-thought reasoning traces to train smaller, cheaper student models that rival leading Western systems, effectively bypassing costly development phases. Academic and defense-industrial papers published between 2024 and 2026 reveal that institutions like the Chinese Academy of Sciences and various People's Liberation Army units are actively engaged in these campaigns.

To protect these efforts, Chinese researchers are developing sophisticated evasion techniques to remove watermarks, bypass API restrictions, and defeat backdoor detectors. The resulting distilled models are being integrated directly into public security surveillance systems, cyber operations, and military command structures. This systematic exploitation allows Beijing to bypass Western intellectual property protections, accelerate its military intelligentization goals, and obscure the true origin and vulnerabilities of its deployed AI systems.

Chinese military researchers tap US AI models to train defence systems

Reuters  |  Eduardo Baptista

Chinese military researchers affiliated with the People's Liberation Army have leveraged outputs from leading American artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic defence systems, according to a review of over 80 academic papers and patents. The practice relies heavily on model distillation, a process where smaller, specialized neural networks capture the complex reasoning pathways of advanced Western systems for localized deployment in surveillance, cyber operations, and tactical decision-making without requiring massive compute infrastructure.

By extracting proprietary technical capabilities, military-linked institutions seek to bypass Washington's strict export controls and hardware restrictions to narrow the technological gap with the United States. In response, American officials contend this unauthorized extraction violates intellectual property rights and undermines strategic export controls, while Beijing rejects the allegations as American technological hegemonism. The dispute over model distillation has subsequently emerged as a major friction point ahead of bilateral United States-China discussions on global artificial intelligence governance and safety standards.

Will Philippine Sea be the main battlefield for PLA carriers in a Taiwan war?

South China Morning Post  |  Gabriel Dominguez

Chinese aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the Philippine Sea are positioning to block United States and allied forces from defending Taiwan during a cross-strait conflict. Deploying People's Liberation Army naval carrier formations past the first island chain creates an operational buffer to intercept incoming adversary warships and project power across crucial sea lines of communication in the western Pacific.

This strategic posture transforms the Philippine Sea from a traditional staging area for foreign military intervention into a contested maritime battleground where layered defensive networks can be executed beyond coastal waters. Placing capital ships in these deep waters allows Beijing to extend carrier-based air defense and anti-ship weapon umbrellas, directly threatening foreign naval forces before they can enter regional operational theaters. As Chinese naval capability expands, carrier deployments into these eastern waters signal a decisive shift toward forward deterrence designed to delay or completely deter external military intervention.

China’s military goal is to stand neck and neck with US: ex-PLA colonel Zhou Bo

South China Morning Post  |  Alcott Wei, Amber Wang

Former People’s Liberation Army Senior Colonel Zhou Bo stated in an interview that China’s ultimate military objective is to achieve parity with the United States armed forces rather than establish global dominance. The People’s Liberation Army continues to advance its modernization framework toward the key 2027 centenary milestone, which aims to accelerate mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization across all combat branches.

This strategic push reflects Beijing's effort to counterbalance American military posture in the Indo-Pacific while addressing operational dilemmas associated with long-term peacetime conditions. On the Taiwan issue, Zhou emphasized that Beijing maintains its foundational preference for peaceful reunification while preserving military deterrence capabilities against foreign intervention and secessionist forces. As strategic competition between Washington and Beijing intensifies, the risk of accidental encounters in surrounding waters underscores the urgency for robust bilateral risk-reduction protocols. Ultimately, China’s defense trajectory signals a persistent commitment to matching Western operational proficiency, shaping long-term regional stability, deterrence dynamics, and geopolitical balances across the maritime commons.

As Cease-Fire Teetered, Iran Plotted a Wider War With Aid of Its Proxies

The New York Times  |  Farnaz Fassihi, Neil MacFarquhar

Iranian military planners and allied militia leaders secretly devised a coordinated regional escalation strategy during a spring ceasefire to drastically raise the costs of any renewed United States military strikes against the Islamic Republic. Recent drone and missile attacks targeting a major Saudi Arabian oil facility, gas tankers at an Egyptian port near the Suez Canal, and a Jordanian base housing American personnel demonstrate the execution of this multipronged doctrine.

Established during the diplomatic lull, the secret framework utilizes decentralized proxy networks to systematically expand operational fronts while maintaining strategic coordination. Senior Iranian officials, including negotiator adviser Mahdi Mohammadi, confirmed that these coordinated proxy forces, historically termed the Axis of Resistance, are actively rewriting conflict engagement rules across the Middle East. Despite suffering severe tactical setbacks since late 2023 following the Hamas offensive against Israel, Tehran has effectively reconstituted its regional leverage by deploying asymmetric capabilities to disrupt global trade routes and energy infrastructure.

The War That Could Swallow the World

The New York Times  |  David French

U.S. military operations against Iran face escalating strategic uncertainty as national security advisers disagree on a clear path forward following targeted airstrikes. President Donald Trump initially ordered a new round of strikes aiming to force Iranian capitulation, before abruptly pausing actions after reported requests from regional actors. The current military approach relies heavily on limited aerial bombardment and hopes for an internal popular uprising to overthrow the regime, mirroring past tactics used in Venezuela.

However, Iranian state power and military capabilities significantly exceed those of previous regional adversaries like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, rendering limited kinetic options insufficient to compel surrender without risking broader regional conflict. Continuing limited strikes risks strategic defeat, whereas deeper kinetic involvement threatens dangerous escalation across the Middle East. Without a viable secondary strategy beyond incremental airstrikes, Washington remains trapped between an ineffective campaign of coercion and the acute hazard of an unchecked regional escalation cycle.

This Is What My Father’s Assassination Taught Me About the War in Iran

The New York Times  |  Mehrzad Boroujerdi

On Dec. 23, 1978, armed assailants executed two coordinated ambushes in Ahvaz, killing Iranian oil official Malek-Mohammad Boroujerdi and American oil executive Paul Grimm in the operational hub of Iran’s petroleum industry. The orchestrators of these assassinations later helped establish the Islamic Republic of Iran, forging a resilient lay revolutionary cadre that now occupies key government leadership positions.

This generation, born in the mid-1950s and shaped by the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, possesses deep institutional memory and survival instincts refined through decades of sanctions and military confrontation. American policymakers, including the Trump administration, face a regime whose endurance stems from these veteran militant leaders rather than clerical authority alone. Understanding these power structures remains critical as Washington navigates conflict with Tehran, where neither war nor peace can be achieved easily. Secular nationalists like Boroujerdi were targeted during the uprising while refusing to align with either Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini or Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Floating Liabilities: Aircraft Carriers in the Age of Precision Strike and Irregular Warfare

Irregular Warfare | Tahir Mahmood Azad

In mid-March 2026, the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike groups withdrew from forward offensive positions near Iran to avoid precision missile threats. This tactical retreat demonstrates how mid-tier adversaries and irregular forces can neutralize multi-billion-dollar US naval assets using low-cost asymmetric weapons, challenging decades of American maritime power projection.

The proliferation of space-based reconnaissance, hypersonic glide vehicles like Iran's Fattah-2, and saturation drone swarms has eroded the traditional maritime anonymity that once protected these supercarriers. During the 2025–2026 campaign, protecting these platforms required extensive tanker support and strategic deception, which severely reduced their operational strike efficiency. To counter these vulnerabilities, the United States must transition toward longer-range unmanned platforms, restructure escort economics with autonomous systems, and accelerate distributed land- and submarine-based strike architectures to maintain deterrence in highly contested environments where concentrated assets are increasingly liabilities.

The Vulnerability of Autonomous Warfare Systems

Real Clear Defense  |  Burak Oktenli

The United States military is rapidly acquiring autonomous warfare systems, including collaborative combat aircraft and uncrewed ground vehicles, without adequately measuring its forces' capability to operate when these technologies are jammed or spoofed. This rapid integration of artificial intelligence and machine-speed sensor fusion creates an exposed flank if adversaries disrupt critical satellite navigation and communication signals.

Lessons from the war in Ukraine demonstrate that electronic warfare, rather than kinetic defense, serves as the primary threat to uncrewed platforms, forcing reliance on fiber-optic controls and edge-based machine vision. While the Army's space training doctrine acknowledges these degraded environments, realistic electromagnetic denial training remains restricted to limited domestic ranges like the White Sands Missile Range. Consequently, manual reversion skills such as analog land navigation and degraded-mode gunnery are eroding unevenly across formations. Addressing this vulnerability requires establishing standardized readiness reporting for manual operations and routinely simulating network-denied conditions during home-station training exercises.

Winning the Peace: The Democratic Dilemma of Limited War

The Cipher Brief | Dr. John Bruni, Sami Omari

Modern democratic militaries struggle with strategic translation, failing to convert tactical combat victories in places like Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza into durable political outcomes. This gap between military supremacy and political consolidation is actively monitored and exploited by strategic rivals including Russia and China. Institutional fragmentation within democracies, compounded by competing departmental priorities, vertical governance structures, and short electoral cycles of two to five years, creates severe structural barriers to coherent long-term grand strategy.

These friction points disrupted Western efforts in Afghanistan, where President Obama's 2009 surge carried a rigid July 2011 withdrawal deadline, the 2020 Doha Agreement prioritized exit timetables over political settlements, and NATO allies like France withdrew combat troops in 2012. To prevent strategic failure, democracies must synchronize military force with diplomacy, economic statecraft, and civil governance from a campaign's inception, potentially establishing an independent National Strategy Commission to sustain institutional memory across changing administrations.

Trump is winning every battle in Iran—and risking the war that matters

Fox News | Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, (ret.)

Donald Trump is securing successive tactical victories against Iran through aggressive economic sanctions and targeted military deterrence, yet these short-term successes risk igniting a catastrophic regional war. This confrontational approach has successfully squeezed Tehran's financial resources and disrupted its proxy networks across the Middle East, demonstrating tactical dominance.

However, the lack of a clear diplomatic off-ramp or long-term strategic framework threatens to push both nations into an unintended escalatory spiral. By prioritizing immediate tactical pressure over a sustainable diplomatic resolution, the current policy leaves the United States vulnerable to asymmetric retaliation and regional instability. Consequently, the risk of a wider kinetic conflict grows as traditional deterrence mechanisms break down without active communication channels. Ultimately, this escalatory trajectory could force Washington into a costly, protracted war that undermines broader global security priorities and strains key international alliances in the Middle East.

The Ambiguity Spiral in Iran: How Washington’s Lack of Clarity Leads to Escalation

Foreign Affairs | Erik Lin-Greenberg

U.S. military operations under Operation Epic Fury against Iran have triggered severe regional escalation due to Washington's ambiguous strategic objectives and inconsistent policy messaging. This lack of clarity prompted Tehran to view the conflict in existential terms, especially after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, leading to massive retaliatory drone and missile strikes.

Historically, the Trump administration has struggled to define a singular end state, vacillating between degrading military capabilities and pursuing outright regime change. This internal indecision undermined the June memorandum of understanding, as conflicting interpretations of safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz quickly collapsed the fragile truce. Furthermore, Israel's parallel operations against Hezbollah and weak U.S. domestic support—with 68 percent of Americans opposing the war—have further eroded Washington's deterrence credibility. To establish a durable peace, Washington must communicate consistent, explicit demands regarding sanctions relief and maritime security to prevent a continuous spiral of miscalculated retaliation.

A Tragedy in Iran Might Persuade Hegseth to Change Course

The Atlantic  |  Nancy Youssef

The Pentagon is considering restoring up to half of its civilian casualty mitigation roles following a devastating air strike in Minab, Iran, that killed approximately 170 people, mostly children. This potential policy reversal marks a significant shift for U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who previously downsized staff dedicated to avoiding civilian casualties.

These cuts were part of a broader effort by the incoming administration to prioritize battlefield lethality and eliminate perceived operational restraint. However, the five-month, on-again, off-again war with Iran has forced military officials to confront the severe human toll of high-tempo air operations. While Congress had previously mandated enhancements to protect non-combatants after heavy casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current proposal to reinstate these critical oversight positions now awaits Hegseth's final signature to take effect, representing a major bureaucratic course correction amidst ongoing regional hostilities and intense international scrutiny.

Why a Weaker Russia Keeps Fighting

Foreign Affairs  |  Alexander Gabuev, Alexandra Prokopenko, Tatiana Stanovaya

Russian President Vladimir Putin is sustaining his war against Ukraine despite deteriorating military and economic conditions that have derailed his strategic plans. Although Ukrainian forces have expanded frontline "kill zones" and disrupted Russian logistics through deep-strike campaigns, Moscow is actively adapting to preserve its combat capabilities and maintain the initiative.

This persistence stems from the Kremlin's ability to insulate its regime from domestic dissatisfaction using sophisticated tools of repression and domestic borrowing. To finance the ballooning budget deficit, the state is cutting civilian expenditures and forcing regional governments to absorb rising defense costs. Meanwhile, the military is doubling ballistic missile production and utilizing devastating glide bombs to target Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. Ultimately, the Kremlin intends to inflict maximum civilian terror through systematic energy and port strikes to trigger a massive new migration wave into Europe, ensuring the conflict drags on indefinitely.

Zelensky says Ukraine has ‘no interceptors’ as ballistic missiles hit Kyiv

The Washington Post  |  David L. Stern, Kostiantyn Khudov, Serhii Korolchuk, Serhiy Morgunov

Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv early on August 1, 2026, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 30 as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed his country has completely exhausted its critical air defense interceptors. The strike marked the second devastating missile assault on the Ukrainian capital within a single week, exposing severe gaps in urban defensive coverage.

Zelensky had explicitly requested urgent shipments of American surface-to-air missiles during a White House meeting on Tuesday, attempting to stave off the imminent inventory collapse. The total exhaustion of air defense munitions leaves government infrastructure and civilian population centers entirely unshielded against high-speed ballistic trajectory threats. Furthermore, these depleted stockpiles highlight persistent production bottlenecks and delivery delays across Western defense industrial pipelines tasked with sustaining Ukraine’s layered network. Without immediate Allied replenishment of interceptor munitions, Ukrainian forces face compounding strategic vulnerabilities against ongoing Russian long-range bombardment campaigns aimed at degrading national resilience.

Economic Warfare: A Foundation for Twenty-First-Century Strategic Practice

US Army War College Press  |  Greg Kennedy, Antulio J. Echevarria II, Anna Brinkman-Schwartz

The February 2022 Russia-Ukraine War fundamentally transformed Sino-American economic competition from weaponized interdependence into an active instrument of conventional theater warfare. Great power rivalries between the United States and China increasingly center on geoeconomic leverage, forcing defense planners to integrate corporate, financial, and technological assets into national security strategies.

Historical applications of economic statecraft demonstrate that targeted financial sanctions, supply chain controls, and industrial mobilization function simultaneously as offensive weapons and defensive shields. Effective strategic posture requires joint military and civilian institutions to systematically coordinate cross-societal resources across academic, corporate, financial, and defense sectors. Modern military leadership must actively shape national geoeconomic policy rather than treating financial leverage purely as a civilian diplomatic tool. Expanding peer-to-peer competition indicates that future high-intensity operations will depend directly on a state's capacity to maintain economic resilience while disrupting adversary supply networks during prolonged conflicts.

Zelensky Asked Trump for a Favor From Elon Musk

The Atlantic  |  Simon Shuster, Missy Ryan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky requested that U.S. President Donald Trump secure permission from Elon Musk to use the Starlink satellite-communications network for guiding drone strikes against ballistic-missile launchers inside Russia. This strategic proposal, presented during closed-door White House talks on July 28, 2026, seeks to bypass critical shortages of American Patriot air-defense interceptors.

The ongoing conflict in Iran has severely depleted U.S. stockpiles of these advanced interceptors, forcing Kyiv to seek alternative technological solutions to counter Russian aerial threats. Currently, SpaceX restricts Starlink usage to Ukrainian-controlled territories, including Crimea and other Russian-occupied regions, while strictly prohibiting its operation within Russian borders. Although the plan leverages existing American commercial technology to sustain Ukraine's defense capabilities through the upcoming winter, Trump remained noncommittal during the deliberations, leaving the future of the initiative highly uncertain according to multiple officials. This leaves Kyiv's winter survival strategy in doubt as it struggles to secure alternative means of neutralizing deep-strike capabilities.

The Long Destruction of Gaza: Toxic Saturation, Health Decimation, and Climate Loss and Damage

E-International Relations  |  Carly A. Krakow

A phased ceasefire agreement implemented on 19 January 2025 aims to halt Israel's fifteen-month military assault on the Gaza Strip, which has caused unprecedented casualties and infrastructural devastation. This diplomatic intervention seeks to address a humanitarian crisis that has left over 48,000 Palestinians dead and triggered widespread famine.

Decades of an unlawful blockade and occupation prior to October 2023 had already systematically degraded Gaza's healthcare, water, and electrical infrastructure, inducing a state of chronic environmental vulnerability. This systemic degradation, termed toxic saturation, severely exacerbates the population's susceptibility to climate change, positioning Palestine as a primary candidate for the newly operationalized United Nations climate loss and damage fund. However, geopolitical tensions persist as United States funding remains minimal despite its historical emissions, while Donald Trump's proposals to displace Palestinians and sanction the International Criminal Court threaten to completely derail long-term reconstruction efforts.

Why Is the U.S. Running So Low on Weapons?

The Atlantic | Phillips Payson O’Brien

United States military operations against Iran since February 28 have expended two-thirds of its Patriot missile interceptors, over a third of its THAAD interceptors, and a third or more of its prewar stock of Tomahawk cruise missiles. This rapid munition depletion during a brief regional conflict highlights a severe armaments crisis for Washington and its allies in the Persian Gulf.

Existing industrial production patterns indicate that fully replenishing these advanced missile stockpiles will take several years, leaving defense postures vulnerable despite a temporary cease-fire. The cost asymmetry exacerbates this operational challenge, as expensive air-defense systems costing millions per unit, such as the Patriot PAC-3, are routinely deployed to intercept Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles assembled for approximately $30,000 each. This fundamental shift toward low-cost drone warfare exposes systemic vulnerabilities in Western defense industrial bases, forcing allied nations dependent on American military hardware to urgently formulate alternative defense strategies.

How Islands Shape Maritime Control in the Strait of Hormuz

Oxford Geopolitica  |  Bruno Ferreira Chaves Cortez

Iranian military forces leverage two strategic island groups in the Strait of Hormuz to maintain a resilient anti-access/area-denial posture despite sustained U.S. and allied strikes. The First Insular Sentinel, comprising Qeshm and Larak islands near Oman's Musandam Peninsula, houses Peykaap II-class missile boats, Tirada-2S electronic warfare jamming systems, and Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rocket platforms.

Farther west, the Second Insular Sentinel—consisting of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb—serves as a forward operational network featuring fortified coastal berms, observation garrisons, and extensive underground tunnel complexes. As these islands have been progressively transformed into heavily militarised outposts, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units store anti-ship cruise missiles, naval mines, and drones inside hardened subterranean facilities. Following March 2026 military strikes against Qeshm, where Forbes reported that artillery was deployed, this geographic depth preserves Tehran’s capability to disrupt commercial navigation and project asymmetric sea-denial across Persian Gulf maritime chokepoints.