DEFENSE STRATEGY
Year:2012 | Volume:9 | Issue:35|Papers Count:8

The geopolitical Persian Gulf region consists of the states that have innumerable grounds of divergence and convergence in relations to each other because of their structural and functional characteristics. Employing the method of field research, this article seeks to identify and understand the elements of convergence between the Islamic Republic of Iran and members states of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The findings of this research have been assessed in light of the four variables of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The results of the study show that diplomatic-political elements constitute the most influential factors within the category of “strengths”, social-cultural elements are more important than others within the category of “weaknesses”, diplomatic-political factors have the greatest impact within the category of “opportunities”, and finally military-security elements are the most significant factors within the category of “threats”. Therefore, political and strategic planners and policy-makers are required to give serious consideration to these factors and elements.

Security conflicts have increased in the Persian Gulf region and South West Asia over the post-World War II era. The establishment of the Zionist regime, its relative hard-power superiority to other regional state units, the intervention of great powers in the region, the presence of various US-led military bases and the existence of economic resources may be considered as the major factors contributing to the escalation of crises in the region. The principal characteristic of those states that are located in such regions is that they face various security and strategic threats. Given this explanation, the approach of the Islamic Republic to defence and strategic planning as formulated within the framework of Iran’s Fifth Development Plan may be seen as an effort to organize and create balance of power in the region. Notably, power-building as the chief part of conventional deterrence and regional balance, has been underscored in the article 45 of the macro-policies advocated by the Fifth Development Plan. Along the line, this article investigates the different dimensions and requirements of such an approach.

The Spatial Planning of border areas in the Islamic Republic of Iran has a special place in its planning system due to the country’s long borders and the location of more than half of Iranian provinces on international borders with the neighboring states. Given this, the present research aims to explain the position of Spatial Planning border areas in Iran’s planning system, elucidate its relevant dimensions and elements, and tease out the way in which these elements are related to other significant elements in the country’s planning regime while striving to work out the importance and necessity of the Spatial Planning of border areas in general.

The border between Iran and Pakistan is among the borders that have invariably caused numerous problems for border guards, residents of the border areas and officials. Therefore, the optimal administration of this border in order to minimize the related threats and costs and utilize its environmental capacities seems necessary. In spite of many efforts by the relevant institutions and organizations to solve these problems, no considerable favourable result has been achieved in the management and administration of this part of Iranian borders, which is mostly due to the existence of manifold obstacles to realizing such an objective. The identification and understanding of these hurdles, however, will help the officials a great deal to administrate the Iranian-Pakistani border in an optimal manner. The results of this research illustrate that a group of political, economic, historical and cultural factors as well as the structural characteristics of border and border areas are the most important obstacles to Iran’s progress towards optimal administration of its border with Pakistan. The study also argues that working towards the comprehensive development of border areas, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of security forces guarding them, and finally applying an integrated and harmonious type of administration to the border are the measures which can enable us overcome these problems.

Security and strategic issues such as the rivalry-marked presence of foreigners, the challenge of strengthening the legal regime of the Mazandaran Lake (Caspian Sea), the crisis of its militarization, the problem of how best to exploit its natural resources particularly the gas and oil reserves and how to transfer this energy, and finally severe environmental problems are among the most significant challenges facing the formation of a regional security regime in the region. Common economic interests, not least the numerous capacities of the region to generate considerable profits and revenues through the export of energy, geographical proximity, shared threats and challenged as indicated above as well as historical and cultural alignments make it possible to study the Mazandaran Lake region as a regional security complex. This article’s authors emphasize the position of economic factors, particularly energy-based requirements, as the most outstanding motivation for the development of a regional security complex in the Mazandaran Lake region while explaining the challenge of achieving unanimity and consensus on the consolidation of the lake’s legal regime as the most important impediment to forming such a security establishment.

Given their organizational conditions and characteristics, defence research centres need a system of performance assessment as well as a set of suitable criteria for assessment in order to fulfil their duties duly. This research aims to offer a appropriate model for assessing the performance of defence research centres.The findings of this study, which has been conducted via the descriptive-analytical method, show that development and security in border areas are mutually required conditions. It also demonstrates that the degree of lack of regional balance between Iran’s border areas and those inside the Iranian territory exerts a considerable impact upon national development. In other words, the lack of development in border areas, which leads to insecurity, has adverse effects upon non-development and insecurity all over the country. In addition, many other subjective and objective hindrances have so far caused such negative impacts to persist. The article finally asserts that the Spatial Planning of border areas seeks to eliminate these obstacles and help realize sustainable and harmonious national development in the country by offering a type of relevant special-strategic planning.

Effective utilization of knowledge resources and establishing a strong and progressive system of knowledge management is one of the major strategic advantages in defence organizations. Among the processes of knowledge management, the issue of sharing knowledge has attracted the close attention of many thinkers and theorists in the field. The present research seeks to investigate the issue of evaluating knowledge sharing process in a defence organization in an academic and scientific fashion. Along the way, it has first tried to identify a set of key elements of success and other factors relevant to the process of knowledge sharing through reviewing the existing literature on the subject. Then, conducting a survey and employing a the statistical method of two-stage test, its tests the hypotheses related to each one of the key elements of success.Finally, the Friedman test is applied to the results and a ranked list of all key factors of success is provided on the basis of the points each factor scores.