From Maritime Disruption to Strategic Adaptation: The Iran War and the Future Maritime Geopolitics of the Indian Ocean

By : Abhay Kumar Singh

Page No: 157-182

Abstract
The Iran War has renewed concerns regarding the vulnerability of global maritime trade, critical sea lines of communication and interconnected energy networks. Yet recent disruptions—including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine War and the Red Sea crisis—demonstrate that severe maritime disruptions do not invariably produce systemic collapse. Existing scholarship explains maritime vulnerability more effectively than it explains why disruptions of comparable scale often produce markedly different strategic and economic outcomes. This article argues that such variation is shaped less by the disruptive event itself than by the interaction between disruptive pressures and the adaptive capacity of the maritime systems confronting them.
To explain this relationship, the article develops a Maritime Systems Analytical Architecture (MSAA) linking disruptive pressure, adaptive capacity, adaptation, operational elasticity, maritime continuity and strategic outcomes. The framework is applied comparatively to the historical evolution of maritime systems and four contemporary stress tests culminating in the Iran War. The analysis shows that maritime continuity is generally preserved through distributed processes of institutional, commercial, technological and logistical adaptation, albeit at higher economic and operational cost. It further demonstrates that the Iran War represents the most demanding contemporary stress test of maritime adaptive capacity. The article concludes that future maritime strategy should complement efforts to prevent disruption with greater emphasis on strengthening the adaptive capacities that sustain maritime continuity under conditions of persistent geopolitical contestation.

Author
Commodore Abhay Kumar Singh (Retd) is an author and commentator on geopolitical and maritime affairs. His research focuses on maritime security, naval strategy, and geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific. A regular contributor to academic journals and policy publications, he is the author of India–China Rivalry: Asymmetric No Longer? An Assessment of China’s Evolving Perceptions of India and co-editor of Ukraine War: Military Perspectives and Strategic Reflections.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/JIOS.2026.34.02.4