نشریه مطالعات خاورمیانه
سال دهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 35، پاییز 1382)

The fall of the Soviet Union has caused the regional and international relations to enter a new phase and changed many countries’ status, role, credibility, place and foreign policies. Iran’s security environment and geopolitical conditions were affected following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Russian Federation. Given the importance of such developments, the reconsideration of Russia’s regional policies and their impact on Iran’s national security are taken into account in this article. On this basis, first the effects of the disintegration of the Soviet Union on Central Asia and the Caucasus are discovered and then Russia’s regional policies are examined under two headings including security-creating (i.e. along with the Iran’s national interest and security) and security-destroying (i.e. contrary to the Iran’s national interest and security).

The occupation of Iraq and the duties of coalition forces in this respect have caused many discussions among lawyers. The observation of freedom of religion in occupied territories though emphasized by international conventions contrasts the organized activities of missionary groups which are in line with the viewpoints of American politicians in recent years. Scrutinizing the issue of freedom of religion under the contemporary international law, the author suggests that the coalition forces should provide the Iraqi people with the necessary conditions for free access to their religious premises and facilities and keep full and impartial supervision over the relief and humanitarian activities.

Turkey has made enormous efforts to be among the European countries during the recent decade. Given the consequences of Turkish membership in the European Union for the country and its neighboring states, studying this subject is of utmost importance. Assuming that the confrontation between Turkey and the European Union will continue due to different worldviews and identities, this article examines the potential change of the situation. The author tests the hypothesis that lack of dynamism in Turkey’s domestic structure on the one hand and the feeling of identity threat by European countries on the other constitute the most serious obstacles to Turkey’s full integration to the Union. As a result, Turkey may, at the best of conditions, become closer to the Union and expand its relations with it, but it will not be able to join it fully. The author, at the end of the article, concludes with the potential ramifications of Turkey’s EU membership on Iran’s position.

The Lebanese Hizbollah Movement is one of the most famous Islamist and militant movements in the Muslim World whose actions against the Israeli and Western forces had significant impact on the Lebanese society as well as on the Middle East. This movement underwent transformation and shifted from a paramilitary and almost clandestine group into a realist political party; a party which complied fully with democratic rules. The main question of this article refers to this very shift and the factors influencing such transformation. Emphasizing the point that Islamic movements do not emerge in the vacuum and are affected by their own milieu conditions, the author views the main factor for the shift in Hizbollah’s behavior as in the signature of the Taef Pact (the termination of the Lebanon’s civil war) and the revival of the consociational democratic system in the country.

A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Arab Middle Eastern countries are under heavy internal and external pressures to initiate political and economic reforms. Saudi Arabia is one of these countries that given its geopolitical and geostrategic location, its place in the oil market and its pivotal role in the region and the Muslim World attracts more attention to its domestic developments and crises. The study of current developments demonstrates that the Saudi political system faces five types of crises, i.e. legitimacy, participation, distribution, identity and succession and the future of Saudi Arabia, particularly its foreign relations, can be understood in light of these crises. Of course, the country’s rulers have carried out certain actions to decrease the impact of the aforementioned crises, which according to the author’s appraisal, have not been capable of responding to the domestic and foreign pressures faced by the country.

The Middle East has long been considered an international arena due to its rich energy resources. Providing statistics on the production and consumption of oil in the world within the next 20 years, this article tries to draw the future prospect for the Middle East and identifies the sources of threat to these countries’ national development and security. According to this study, the growth in the oil consumption in other areas of the world will lead them to become more closely linked to the Middle East and this, in its turn, will bring about strategic challenges. Dealing appropriately with such challenges and resolving related problems depend on rationalism and reforming in order to make the state efficient. From this perspective, effective regimes will provide the grounds for political legitimacy and rational national security doctrine.

Translated by Jahanshir Siah-Mansoury Many scholars predict that the rise of new communication technologies will deeply change political and social realities in the Middle East region. Such a presumption may ignore the importance of the role played by trust in the Arab societies. In the Arab Middle East, gaining information through oral sources still enjoys more reliability than through written sources. This article, written by one of the prominent scholars on the Arab World, tries to examine the influence of new media in the region. Drawing on three examples of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, he assesses the extent of the ability of new media and the relationship between such media and trust, and demonstrates that new information technologies and the rise of civil society or public sphere will not only lead to fundamental political and social changes.

The expansion of women’s studies in the Arab World has resulted in the growth and development of such research in the Arab Middle East. The author has examined the position of Jordanian women and their presence in the political and social life of the country. She does not regard their problems as separate and apart from the problems women are faced in other Arab countries. She takes advantage of the well-known expression of "New Patriarchy" in describing the political structure in the Arab countries and at the same time, she takes into account the role played by historical, social, educational and economic factors in the formation of the societal realities in the contemporary Jordan. In general, such factors have caused women to be regarded as second-class citizens and leading to unsuccessful presence in political life. To her, women’s associations and organizations in Jordan, despite their increase in recent years, have been ineffective because they have mostly engaged in internal rivalries and disputes. It is worth noting that this article was presented to the Tenth Annual Meeting of the "Democratic Studies in the Arab Countries" project (26 August 2000, Saint Catherine Faculty of Oxford).