Iran as a Regional Power: More Constraints Than Flexibility

Iran, of late, has acquired increasing attention from scholars. Its spectacular rise, within a short span of a decade, from a small power to a medium power in the global context, and from a medium power to a big power in the regional context, has attracted attention not only of military strategists but also of social scientists. Iran’s policies on the domestic field, like the Shah-people revolution, its oil policy and consequently the policy of rapid industrialization, its military policy and foreign policy, therefore, have been studied thoroughly by scholars. Onkar Marwah’s article, ‘Iran as a Regional Power Flexibility and Constraints’ (IDSA Journal, October–December 1976), is not only an attempt to analyse the impact of all these variables on present-day Iran but also to project the Iranian scene in the future.