Strategic Gap Analysis from the General Economic Security Policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran

In recent years, economic security has been at the top of the leadership’s and people’s demands from the regime. Although the country’s general economic security policies have been on the agenda since the beginning of the 2010s, they have always been the Achilles’ heel as the regime has a huge expectation gap regarding the general economic security policies. This research aims to conduct a strategic gap analysis of the country’s general economic security policies to obtain the basis for the pathology of existing strategies. The current research is a qualitative study using the content analysis method, which uses three data sources (triangulation) including the statements of Imam Khomeini and the Supreme leader, the views of official officials, and the ideas of economic and political experts of the country. The findings of this research show that among the five economic security policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, promoting the added value of investment is emphasized more than other aspects of the regime and plays the role of the mother dimension for the other four dimensions. Also, each aspect of the aforementioned policies has seven macro strategies that provide the economic, political, regulatory, and judicial tactical umbrella to realize the goals of each aspect of the general policies of economic security. Strategic gap analysis breaks down and identifies the key cores of each of the above strategies into achievable concepts in a practical way, thus providing a framework for addressing the expectation gap and improving the governance mechanism.