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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compile and prioritize necessary strategies to produce electrical energy from fossil resources in the Iranian power industry.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and internal and external (IE) matrix have been applied in order to illustrate the main path long term planning and development. The benchmarking process has been performed by analyzing seven successful developing countries.FindingsThe results imply that Iran should implement six main strategies for increasing productivity and efficiency, reducing costs, renewing structure and making private, applying IT, increasing productivity of human resources, and environment protection. Benchmarking study shows that Iran has to speed up the environment protection program.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the use of the SWOT and IE matrix provide great advantages, the analysis should apply BSC in developing execution plans.Practical implicationsThe results encourage the Iran power industry since five out of six main strategies have already been chosen for long‐term development.Originality/valueThe paper has provided considerable evidence to suggest that the proposed strategies are in line with benchmarked countries policies in the power industry.