The most dangerous moment in a modern war is not the first strike. It is the silence that follows—when the center goes dark, communications fail, and everyone waits for orders that never come. That is the moment most states are least prepared for.

There is a persistent illusion in small-state defense planning: that survival lies in cohesion. Tighten command, centralize authority, harden the capital, and protect the center. It is a comforting idea, but it is also wrong. If the emerging contours of the current confrontation involving Iran and US/Israeli pressure demonstrate anything, it is this: modern war punishes cohesion under pressure. Precision strike regimes, cyber disruption, and intelligence penetration are designed to locate the center—and disable it quickly. A state that depends on its center is a state that can be paralyzed quickly.

Iran’s answer to this problem is not elegance or efficiency. It is not even, in the conventional sense, effectiveness. It is survivability— not as an abstract concept, but as a design principle.  Critical capabilities are deliberately dispersed across geography and institutions. Command authority is duplicated and layered. Logistics networks are redundant and localized. The system is built so that no single strike, or even a sequence of strikes, can halt its ability to function. And that is precisely why Mongolia should be paying attention.

It is worth noting that the relevance of Iran here is not geopolitical alignment, but structural design. Iran has spent decades preparing for conflict with technologically superior adversaries. Mongolia faces a different strategic environment—defined primarily by its position between Russia and China—but the underlying problem is similar: how to endure pressure from more powerful actors without relying on a vulnerable center.

What analysts often describe as Iran’s “mosaic defense” is better understood as a rejection of the fortress model altogether. In practice, it means a patchwork of semi-autonomous military and paramilitary units—particularly within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij—organized at provincial and local levels. These units are trained and structured to operate independently if cut off from central command, drawing on pre-positioned resources, local knowledge, and pre-defined operational intent. The result is not efficiency, but persistence. In this way, it trades efficiency for survivability, clarity for redundancy, and control for endurance. Instead of concentrating authority and capability, Iran disperses both—geographically, institutionally, and operationally.

The premise is brutal: in a high-end conflict, central command will be degraded or destroyed early. Communications will fail. Senior leadership may not survive the opening phase. The system must therefore function not despite this reality, but because it anticipates it. Authority is pushed downward. Provincial and local commands are expected to act on intent, not instruction. Logistics are dispersed. Redundancies are built not as backups, but as primary pathways. Units are designed to continue operating even when cut off, isolated, or partially degraded.

This is not decentralization as a management philosophy. It is decentralization as a warfighting necessity. For Mongolia, this should be a deeply uncomfortable insight. The Mongolian state remains highly centralized—not just politically, but functionally. Critical infrastructure, decision-making authority, and crisis response capacity are concentrated in and around Ulaanbaatar. Energy distribution, communications networks, and command structures all rely heavily on the capital’s continuity. In peacetime, this is efficient, but in crisis, it is a liability. A Mongolia that cannot function without its center is a Mongolia that can be strategically paralyzed.

The most radical element of Iran’s approach is not dispersion, it is pre-authorization. Units are not simply given autonomy; they are expected to operate without real-time guidance. Command intent is established in advance, and decision rights are delegated downward, so that local commanders can act without waiting for permission. The system assumes that waiting for orders is, in itself, a form of failure. However, this strategy runs counter to the instincts of many modern bureaucratic states, where control is equated with effectiveness. But in a degraded environment, control is often illusory. Communications delays, uncertainty, and disruption make centralized direction not just difficult, but dangerous.

Mongolia’s defense and governance structures are not currently designed for this reality. Decision-making authority remains tightly held. Crisis scenarios often assume continuity of communication and leadership. The implicit model is one of managed disruption—not systemic degradation. Iran’s model begins from a different premise: what if disruption is not an exception, but the baseline condition? And what if the system must function precisely when coordination breaks down? For Mongolia, this would require more than doctrinal adjustment. It would demand a cultural shift—from obedience to initiative, from hierarchy to intent, from control to resilience.

Iran complements its internal resilience with an external strategy of horizontal escalation, expanding the battlefield across domains and geographies to impose costs on adversaries. Mongolia cannot replicate this model directly; it lacks proxy networks, regional reach, and the geopolitical posture to project force outward in the same way. But the underlying logic still applies. A state that cannot win symmetrically must change the structure of the conflict. It must transform a localized confrontation into a broader strategic problem. For Mongolia, this means leveraging what it does have: its geographic position between two great powers, its critical mineral resources, and its well-developed “third neighbor” diplomatic framework.

In practice, this could involve rapidly engaging international institutions, invoking multilateral agreements, and mobilizing economic and diplomatic stakeholders to raise the cost of escalation for any adversary. The objective is not escalation for its own sake, but rather expansion of the cost calculus. The question is not how Mongolia can defeat a stronger adversary. It is how Mongolia can ensure that conflict with it cannot remain contained. In other words, a conflict involving Mongolia must become international before it can be contained.

But there is a catch—and it is here that history offers a warning.

Operation Valkyrie (German: Unternehmen Walküre) was not originally a coup plan, but a World War II German contingency plan, designed for the Territorial Reserve Army to restore order in the event of internal unrest—whether caused by Allied bombing or uprisings among forced labor populations. In other words, it was a continuity mechanism: a system designed to preserve state control under crisis conditions. Its vulnerability lay in its strength. Authority had already been pre-delegated, orders were pre-written, and chains of command were pre-established. This made the system efficient, but also exploitable.

A group of insiders, led by Claus von Stauffenberg, was able to attempt to redirect that system following the failed assassination attempt of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944. The plan ultimately collapsed, but the lesson remains clear: any architecture designed to function without central control is also susceptible to manipulation without central control. Iran mitigates this risk through ideology, parallel institutions, and internal surveillance. Mongolia will not—and should not—replicate those mechanisms. But it cannot ignore the underlying problem.

In other words, this is not an argument against decentralization. It is an argument about how to design it. Any decentralized system must still be a coherent system. For Mongolia, this means that resilience design must include:

Robust authentication of orders under degraded conditions
Clear boundaries on delegated authority
Redundant but cross-checking chains of command
Institutional trust and professional norms strong enough to substitute for ideology
In other words, the system must be able to survive not only decapitation, but impersonation. The core insight Mongolia can draw from Iran then is not tactical, but philosophical. Most states design their systems to function when things go right. Even contingency planning often assumes partial disruption within an otherwise intact framework. Iran designs for failure—systemic, cascading, and immediate. This does not make it invulnerable, but it does make it difficult to collapse quickly. For Mongolia, the challenge is not to emulate Iran wholesale. The political, cultural, and geopolitical contexts are too different. But the underlying design principles are transferable:

Fragment the system deliberately to avoid single points of failure
Pre-authorize action to ensure continuity under disruption
Expand conflicts beyond the immediate battlespace
Balance autonomy with safeguards against internal misuse
Above all, it requires abandoning the illusion that the state can be protected by protecting its center.

The steppe is not a fortress. It never has been. Its strength has always been in dispersion, mobility, and endurance. The question is whether Mongolia’s modern institutions are prepared to rediscover that logic deliberately—or whether they will be forced to rediscover it under fire.

By Siamak Naficy

Siamak Tundra Naficy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. An anthropologist by training, he brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of strategic culture, conflict resilience, and the human dimensions of security. His work draws from both naturalist and classical realist traditions, emphasizing how power, interests, the history of ideas, and human nature shape conflict. His research interests span conflict theory, wicked problems, leadership, sacred values, cognitive science, and animal behavior—viewed through an anthropological lens. The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

Published Date:2026-05-14