Iran’s underground military network has helped sustain its capacity under attack

A report says Iran’s underground military infrastructure has played a key role in sustaining strategic capacity during the recent Gulf conflict. It highlights Qeshm Island, the Strait of Hormuz and buried networks tied to logistics, production and deterrence.

TEHRAN: Iran’s buried military infrastructure has emerged as a central element in how the country has maintained strategic capacity during the recent Gulf conflict, according to a report that examined the role of underground systems in the face of US-Israeli attacks.

According to a report by Dawn, the conflict, now under what it described as a fragile two-week ceasefire after 42 days of heavy fighting, has not only been shaped by missiles, bombs and interception systems, but has also altered the physical battleground itself.

It identified Qeshm Island as a key example of that shift. Beneath the island’s coastal communities, desalination facilities and free trade infrastructure lies what the report described as a buried military architecture linking geology, logistics and strategic force. Qeshm sits along the same geography that influences global fuel prices, shipping costs, remittance economies and wider political risk across the Arabian Sea, with the Strait of Hormuz at the centre of that landscape.

The report said the war cannot be understood only through air strikes, missile interceptions or diplomatic developments, because it is also transforming the material ground on which circulation depends.

On March 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said the United States had struck a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island. Tehran called the attack a flagrant crime against civilians, and Araghchi said it cut off freshwater supplies to 30 surrounding villages.

According to the report, the strike highlighted a broader reality: water systems, shipping routes and the management of one of the world’s most important energy corridors have become part of the same conflict zone. It said war is no longer limited to clearly defined military targets, but now extends across systems that support daily life.

 

The reorganisation of space

The report said that once surface infrastructure becomes constantly vulnerable, the issue is no longer only survival under bombardment, but the reorganisation of movement, storage, communication and production within an exposed battlespace.

Roads, ports, power systems, wells, workshops and storage depots on the surface are drawn into what it described as an architecture of surveillance and attack. In that setting, Qeshm is not unique. The report pointed to tunnels in Gaza, dispersed launch systems in southern Lebanon and Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, buried under 80 meters of rock, as examples of material arrangements created under siege, sanctions and sustained aerial threat.

It said these systems are not secondary wartime tactics, but structures that bring together routes, stockpiles, command systems, protected passageways and hidden repair sites in order to preserve political and military functioning when the surface has become highly exposed to destruction.

In that sense, the move underground is not simply concealment, the report argued, but a forced reorganisation of space under a form of warfare that seeks to make the visible world fully vulnerable to interruption.

 

Buried geography and wider circulation

The report said Iran’s missile infrastructure reflects the same logic on a broader scale, with concealment aimed less at secrecy than at endurance. It said strategic capacity has been organised through hardened terrain, buried storage and dispersed launch systems, making it more difficult for strikes to achieve decisive results.

That architecture, it added, increases the burden on an attacker, who must fight a prolonged campaign against tunnels, shielded routes and layered movement sites rather than a limited set of visible installations. Damage at one point in the network does not necessarily disrupt the larger system of storage, transport and deployment.

From the air, the landscape may appear to be a collection of coordinates and suspected activity points, the report said. On the ground, however, it functions as a layered structure in which geology itself becomes part of the military challenge, complicating efforts to turn aerial superiority into total control.

The report also linked this buried geography to wider systems of circulation, saying the war is also a struggle over shipping routes, energy flows, sanctions, finance and supply chains that sustain military force. It said control of the skies is tied to control over maritime corridors, insurance systems, energy transit, ports and industrial channels.

It described the Strait of Hormuz as not merely a passage for oil tankers, but a central artery in a global system that the United States and its allies seek to secure through naval deployments, missile defence systems, logistical agreements and regional military integration.

According to the report, Iran’s underground infrastructure along that corridor matters because it allows the threat of disruption to be projected from terrain that cannot easily be neutralised from the air. It added that sanctions operate across the same field by limiting banking access, insurance, industrial procurement, software, components and machinery, with the aim of weakening military capacity not only through bombardment but also by gradually cutting the circuits needed for repair, transport, storage and replenishment.

More than protection

The report said domestic production, dispersed workshops and local engineering have become practical responses to a form of war that combines bombardment with economic pressure. Their importance, it said, lies in rebuilding capacity under pressure through production spread across multiple sites, buried and scattered storage, and movement through concealed routes rather than exposed supply lines.

It added that efforts to reduce missile capacity through sanctions and strikes become harder once the relationship between destruction and exhaustion is no longer direct.

The underground, the report said, is therefore not just a protective shell, but a space where continuity of survival, production, repair and coordination is maintained despite disruption. Buried routes, hardened chambers, shielded workshops and dispersed caches all form part of the same struggle over preserving military continuity and the material conditions that support it.

The report concluded that the contest is not only about missiles or territory, but also about the organisation of space itself. It said war unfolds not only through visible destruction, but through the continuous remaking of terrain by those trying to keep movement, storage, production and retaliation functioning under repeated attack, blockade and infrastructural attrition.

Reference: www.Pakistan.com