نشریه مطالعات خاورمیانه
سال بیست و چهارم شماره 1 (پیاپی 87، بهار 1396)

One of the most important mechanisms for realizing Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy objectives involves devising and implementing an efficient cultural diplomacy. In Iran, within the past years, the importance of developing cultural diplomacy has increasingly gained the attention of policymakers, officials and agents of the country’s academic community; hence much investment has been made in this regard. A number of related activities performed in this respect include publishing articles and books, holding seminars and meetings, initiating a variety of radio and TV stations, admitting foreign students, exchanging delegations from among the intellectuals and reference groups and so on. Exercising cultural diplomacy on part of the Islamic Republic becomes even more crucial in the Middle East, because within the past years we have witnessed the rise of two strong waves of Iranophobia and Shiaphobia
promoted by regional and transregional actors in order to isolate Tehran in its political, security and cultural setting. The authors maintain that political and sociocultural changes within the Middle Eastern countries within the past years along with the two aforementioned waves would demand a revision in Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy attitude in utilizing cultural diplomacy tools and offering a new definition of traditional cultural diplomacy.

This article seeks to investigate relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia on the basis of identity factor within the framework of constructivism, and particularly to explain the impact of identity notions on divergence between the two nations. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has persistently pursued a hostile policy towards Iran following the advent of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Although this policy has seen ups and downs within the past three decades, the hostile nature of the policy has persisted. A glance at bilateral relations since 1925 demonstrates that mutual ties have been overshadowed by conflict and divergence and even signs of tension could be seen in periods of cooperation between the two sides. This article tests the hypothesis that identity-based notions and perceptions have caused the Saudi-Iranian relations to move towards divergence.

Extremist currents take different forms all around the world. The transition from the traditional society to modernity paves the way for the rise of crises. Many foreign and domestic factors including deep economic discrepancy among the people, authoritarianism, fragility of states, lack of legitimacy and of people’s participation in their affairs, ethnic and tribal tendencies, cultural impoverishment and marginalization of a group of people and most importantly the identity crisis give rise to lasting extremism. This is a struggle against the existing values, a response to the deficiencies and marginalization. In this article, the author studies why the collective action of fundamentalist and Islamist groups in the society has taken different shapes over time. Some scholars trace them in history, economy and society, whereas the individual action and collective action of the extremist Islamist groups
should be examined separately.

This article deals mainly with an empirical appraisal of interdependence among the Middle Eastern countries and identifying the type of such interdependence within the 1995-2014 time period. For this purpose. A general model of defense expenditures including economic, social, strategic, political and military variables for the Middle Eastern nations have been designed and in order to appraise them, the Systemic Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) within the dynamic combined data has been used. The findings of the model show that in the long run, the average defense burden of the Middle Eastern countries has had a positive and significant effect on the defense burden of each of the regional nations, indicating the presence of an arms race among the regional countries in the Middle East. On this basis, with a one percent increase in the average defense burden, in the long run the defense
burden of each of the regional countries has seen an almost 0.35% rise.

Due to a variety of internal, regional and international factors, the contemporary Middle East is often portrayed as a mysterious region, suffering from chaos and war, cradle of terrorism, and religious extremism with dictatorial governments. The fast pace of developments in the region makes any prediction of the future trends very difficult. Political history of the region indicates inexperience, political immaturity and uncertainty of most of its governments. Search for legitimacy in most of the regional governments is considered as a vital concern. This article seeks to explore the impact of the inefficiency of political regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt on instability in the Middle East in the post- Cold War era. The authors conclude that inefficiency of political regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt arising from political and economic underdevelopment has resulted in extensive instability in the Middle East
in the post-Cold War era.

This article seeks to explain the serious dilemma of the lack of integration and regionalism in the Middle East, paying particular attention to an influential variable that is the structure of the international system. The author intends to find an answer to the following main question: What are the major obstacles to and failure of regionalism in the Middle East? In the first place, the data collected for the research indicate that the major reasons for the lack of regionalism in the Middle East include the role played and constraints imposed by the structure of the international system as the main cause on the one hand and lack of formation of a collective shared identity due to the presence of conflicting identities as well as the external nature of norms in the region on the other. The research uses a descriptive-analytical method, using the bibliographical data in order to find a convincing answer for the research
question. The author has sought to draw upon a synthetic pattern between the constructivist and neorealist theories in order to better understand questions of regionalism in the Middle East.