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Source: http://csis.org/publication/iranian-strategic-competition
Strategic Competition with Iran: The Military Dimension
(Center for Strategic and International Studies) Anthony H. Cordesman, Vivek Kocharlakota and Adam Seitz - U.S. competition with Iran is a game that has been going on for some three decades. It is clearly unlikely to be ended by better dialog and mutual understanding. Iranian conventional forces remain weak, and are aging more quickly than Iran can as yet modernize them in spite of major efforts to create a military-industrial base. Given the fact that the U.S. brings a far more decisive lead in air, naval, and missile warfare to the table, Iran is anything but the "hegemon of the Gulf." Iran has far greater capability for asymmetric (or irregular) warfare than conventional warfare and has developed a wide mix of land, air, and naval capabilities that can threaten its neighbors, threaten Gulf exports, challenge the U.S., and affect other parts of the Middle East and Asia. They also include the capability to use state and non-state actors as proxies. These forces are the key military elements of Iranian strategic competition and are steadily increasing in size and capability. Iran continues to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons, has chemical weapons, and may have a biological weapons program. Iran has made the development and deployment of long-range missile forces a key priority.