Introduction
On 01 March, Abbas Araghchi the Iranian Foreign Minister described Iran’s defence strategy in a post on X: “We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west. We’ve incorporated lessons accordingly. Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralized Mosaic Defence enables us to decide when—and how—war will end.”
Two key pillars of Iran’s strategy put forth by the statement were: first, observing and adapting to US military weaknesses, and second, complete decentralization of its command and control to ensure resilience and continuity in the event of decapitation strikes. In fact, Iran’s observation of “decapitation strikes on highly-centralised regimes” shaped Iran’s counter-architectural response.
What Is Mosiac Warfare
Mosaic warfare is a multi-domain approach that appears disjointed and runs counter to the belief that only a coordinated, uniformly-trained, smoothly-functioning fighting force would be the more powerful opponent to face. Like tiles in a mosaic, the individual platforms of each domain air, land, maritime, cyber, space and cognitive together create a larger picture of broad and overpowering strength, while simultaneously making it hard for the enemy to pin down one way to fight against such a confusing opponent.
Conceived and put forth by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Mosaic Warfare places a premium on seeing battle as an emergent, complex system, and using low-cost unmanned swarming formations alongside other electronic and cyber effects to overwhelm adversaries. The central idea is to be cheap, small, agile, lethal, flexible, and scalable. Connect small unmanned systems with existing capabilities in creative and continually evolving combinations that take advantage of changing battlefield conditions and emergent vulnerabilities instead of always depending on building the ultimate fighter jet or biggest submarine or most accurate missiles.
It can be just as powerful to take simpler, smaller platforms, network them together, then have them interpret the battle in their own ways that make the most of their advantages. In this theory, adversaries can be caught off guard by innovations like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or ground robots
Iran’s Implementation of Decentralised Mosaic Defence
As witnessed in the ongoing war the Iranian armed forces prioritized the development of specific capabilities that leveraged their inherent strengths such as manpower, strategic depth, and willingness to absorb significant casualties. Simultaneously, they exploited perceived adversary vulnerabilities including sensitivity to casualties, risk aversion, and dependence on advanced technologies and critical military infrastructure. Priority being preserving decision-making, keeping combat units operational and preventing the war from ending with a single devastating strike.
The core assumption being that even though Iran may lose senior commanders, key facilities, communications networks and even centralised control, but they must still be able to keep fighting.
This along with attrition aligned with Tehran’s broader strategy of asymmetric escalation both vertically and horizontally has been witnessed since the start of Tehran’s retaliatory strikes, which focused on exhausting US and Israeli strikes and aimed to bleed them economically, in an effort to bring the war home to their respective populations and ensure that the war remains unpopular domestically.
Iranian strategic thinking believes mosaic defence is a challenge to a Clausewitzian reading of the Iranian centre of gravity; Iran survives not by defending the “main centre of power” but by dispersing said power across multiple operational nodes.
1980-88 Iran–Iraq War as well as the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon during the Civil War, shaped how Iran view the current fight. According to Matthew McInnis, former US Deputy Special Representative for Iran, these two experiences entrenched a strategy based on proxy and asymmetric warfare, as well as ballistic missiles, to confront adversaries with superior technological capabilities and manpower.
The Iran-Iraq war, which featured substantive missile use by Iraq on Iranian cities, anchored ballistic missiles as a key component of Iranian warfare. Its reliance on proxies, meanwhile, was a direct result of the developments of the 1980s, in which Iran sought to project power and safeguard the Revolution by exporting it across the region in the form of proxy groups like Hezbollah.
Development of Iran’s Approach
This three-pronged defence doctrine evolved in 2005, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), under of General Mohammad Jafari, announced its model of ‘mosaic defence’; essentially a decentralized command-and-control system.
As per Dr Michael Connall, an expert on Iranian military culture, this strategy led directly to the restructuring of the IRGC command and control architecture into a system of 31 separate commands, which could launch an insurgency in the case of an invasion and which would make any attempt at degrading Iran’s defence exceedingly difficult.
Each of Iran’s thirty-one provinces possesses its own IRGC headquarters, intelligence apparatus, weapons stockpile, and command-and-control chain. As Farzin Nadimi, at the Washington Institute, stated: “Every province is a mosaic, and the commanders have the ability and power to make decisions. So, when they are cut off from their command in Tehran, they can still be able to function as a cohesive military force”.
Succession planning is embedded three to seven echelons deep. As per Iran’s Fars News Agency “for all sensitive jobs and military commanders, between 3 to 7 successors have been designated”. This pre-delegation means that, in the current conflict, the US and Israeli strategy of targeting mid-ranking commanders has not produced the anticipated operational paralysis. The province does not wait for orders; it operates on “general instructions given in advance.
This doctrine was derived from careful observations of the limits of US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans. In these conflicts, decapitation strikes on highly-centralized regimes often happened rapidly and tilted the battlefield in Washington’s favor within weeks.
Iran’s military was not built for a short war. It was built for a long one. All four pillars of Iran’s defense doctrine – asymmetry, proxies, missiles, and ‘mosaic’ decentralization – have featured prominently in Iran’s strategy to survive the US-Israeli campaign.
The regular army, or Artesh, is expected to absorb the first blow. The armoured, mechanised and infantry formations serve as the initial line of defence, tasked with slowing enemy advances and stabilising the front. Simultaneously, Air defence units, using concealment, deception and dispersal, try to blunt enemy air superiority as much as possible.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Basij a paramilitary militia within the IRGC then take on the next stage of conflict. Their task is to turn the war into one of attrition through decentralised operations, ambushes, local resistance, disruption of supply lines and flexible operations across varied terrain, including urban centres, mountains and remote regions.
Estimated to include upward of one million personnel, the Basij transforms the mosaic from a military structure into a societal one.’ This means that the military structure is deeply woven into the civilian structures of the respective province. The fighters are not defending their own homeland, their cities, and their neighbourhoods. The mosaic structure transitions seamlessly into protracted urban and rural insurgency precisely because every soldier is defending familiar terrain.
Iranian strategic geography is not incidental to the doctrine but constitutive of it. The Zagros and Alborz mountain ranges segment the country into natural compartments, each of which becomes a self-contained operational space.
Beyond the land battle, naval forces play their part through anti-access tactics in the Gulf and around the Strait of Hormuz. Their mission is to make free movement dangerous and costly through fast attack craft, mines, anti-ship missiles and the threat of disruption in one of the world’s most sensitive energy corridors.
Missile forces serve as both deterrent and deep-strike capability, aimed at imposing costs on enemy infrastructure and military targets.
Then comes Iran’s wider regional network: allied armed groups and partner forces across the Middle East, whose role is to widen the battlefield and ensure that any war with Iran does not remain confined to Iranian territory.
Instead of allowing the enemy to isolate one front and destroy one command structure, Iran seeks to spread the war across time, geography and multiple layers of conflict.
Conclusion
The ‘mosaic defense’ approach was apparent from the first retaliatory attacks by Tehran in the aftermath of Operation Epic Fury. In fact, Araghchi stated; “Our military units are now, in fact, independent and somewhat isolated, and they are acting based on general instructions given to them in advance.”
So far, decentralization seems to have worked: strikes, while not at the same tempo as the beginning of the war, continue. This complicates any ground invasion or ground combat options the US may seek to conduct in the future.
In an asymmetric conflict where a weaker actor is pitted against a superior adversary, the weaker actor must tilt the “balance of vulnerability” in its favour to avoid defeat. To do this, it must ensure the survivability of its critical military capabilities and exploit the vulnerabilities of its adversaries.
In today’s wars where endurance rather than decisive battles is the determining factor Mosaic Defence shows the fundamental strategic asymmetry between a destruction-oriented attacker and a resilience-oriented defender. What is important is not the pursuit of victory but impossibility of defeat.
The fact is that every nation has to fight its wars shaped by its geography, threat perceptions, national objectives and resources. India therefore needs to draw the right lessons from the ongoing conflicts and adapt those lessons to our own strategic environment, operational realities and indigenous capabilities.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maj Gen VK Singh, VSM was commissioned into The Scinde Horse in Dec 1983. The officer has commanded an Independent Recce Sqn in the desert sector, and has the distinction of being the first Armoured Corps Officer to command an Assam Rifles Battalion in Counter Insurgency Operations in Manipur and Nagaland, as well as the first General Cadre Officer to command a Strategic Forces Brigade. He then commanded 12 Infantry Division (RAPID) in Western Sector. The General is a fourth generation army officer.
Major General Jagatbir Singh was commissioned into 18 Cavalry in December 1981. During his 38 years of service in the Army he has held various command, staff and instructional appointments and served in varied terrains in the country. He has served in a United Nations Peace Keeping Mission as a Military Observer in Iraq and Kuwait. He has been an instructor to Indian Military Academy and the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington. He is a prolific writer in defence & national security and adept at public speaking.
