نشریه جستارهای سیاسی معاصر
سال هشتم شماره 4 (پیاپی 26، زمستان 1396)

The profound developments in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and in particular the vacuum of power created after the fall of Saddam in 2003, ISIL invasion of this land, and recently a referendum on independence in Iraqi Kurdistanæ in addition to the extensive presence of the United States and its allies in the Middle East after September 11, and the plans for the Middle East and New Middle East strategies, has provided a good basis for expanding the presence and influence of Israel in Iraqi Kurdistan.The main question posed by this article is that the increase in the presence and influence of Israel in Iraqi Kurdistan will produce what consequences for the national security and interests of Iran? This article explores the objectives, interests, and facilitating requirements of the Israeli actions for presence in Iraqi Kurdistan and by using a descriptive-analytical method based on the conceptual framework of the threat balance, attempts have been made to explain the various aspects of the policies and relations of Israel with the Kurds of Iraq and their consequences for the national security of Iran. The findings of the present study indicate that the presence and influence of Israel in the Kurdistan region of Iraq is in line with the strategic goals of this regime, including the creation of a new strategic alliance in the region, which can ultimately be a serious threat to security of Iran.

The Saudi foreign policy after King Salman coming into power has been changed entirely. The important feature of foreign political orientation of Saudis since 2015 has been the activation in the region of the Middle east and the aggressive approach against the Islamic Republic. The purpose of this article is explaining the orientation of foreign policy in the first two years of King Salman's kingdom against Iran which has been researched trough this question: How was the Saudi foreign policy approach against the Islamic Republic during 2015 to 2017? The hypothesis of the article is formed in this way: Saudi foreign policy against the Islamic Republic after King Salman coming into power until the end of 2017, can be analyzed as »Hybrid war«. Diplomacy, supporting local unrest, conventional military forces, special forces, and irregular forces; are the most important components of Saudi hybrid war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Behavioral and verbal rationality of the decision makers of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy over the past two years has prevented the transition of the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia to a full-scale war. The hypothesis of the article is processed by analytical- descriptive method.

Religious democracy is among contemporary concepts coined by Iranian society in the encounter with the serious and effective fault-line of tradition-modernity. In fact, this concept is the longstanding demand of the Iranian subject for the combination of tradition and religion, on the one hand, and, contemporaneousness and demand of the people, on the other hand. Religious democracy is the intellectual innovation of Iranian subject for the renovation or transition from this fault-line. The issues related to this combination have preoccupied the mind of the Iranian subject for about two centuries and are still on the anvil. It seems that with the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the collapse of the authoritarian regime and establishment of the Islamic Republic, parts of this longstanding demand were materialized. But, its stabilization and consolidation has not occurred yet and has faced certain challenges. Some thinkers opine that the reason for the lack of stabilization is structural, while others consider the agents responsible for this issue. Attempts have been made in this article to study these challenges through Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory and method. The hypothesis of this research is that the main challenge in stabilization of religious democracy more than being related to the lack of economic and political structures, or the reasons connected to agents and policymaking of the social elites, pertains to the cognitive-perceptive realm of a discourse. In other words, religious democracy, as one of the central signifiers of the discourse of the Islamic Republic, is still in the stage of finding the signified. This lack of signified hegemony will also cause bewilderment in the realm of structure and agent.

Although the ISIS territory and power has been ended at the end of 2017 in Syria and Iraq, its impacts cause ethnic/religious and geopolitical chaos in the Middle East. On the other hand, ISIS made a crisis in some parts of the Middle East including ethnic segregated spaces with its ideology. This crisis, with new unwanted demographic waves and battles, has created a spaces for new movements. The present study attempts to investigate the spread of ISIS and the Heterodoxic readings of this type of terrorist of misleading Islam accepted by ISIS, Arab nationalism, and its territory dominated by Mesopotamia as a place and basis of crisis through research-descriptive methodology and hybrid methodology influenced by religious and geopolitical nationalism.

Political elites in each political system are one of the factors influencing the process of change, and we need to better understand the elites in order to reach a proper understanding of the developments. Given that, the present study tries to analyze the political and social contexture of the people’s representatives during sixth to tenth periods of Islamic Consultative Assembly with an analytical-comparative approach in order to realize the reasons and causes of the political movements in Iran. Moreover, it answers to these essential questions that what political and social combination have the people’s representatives had during five recent periods of Islamic Consultative Assembly? Furthermore, fundamentally, what are the differences and similarities between the aforementioned periods from the viewpoint of political and social contexture? To answer to these questions, in addition to introducing a description of the political contexture of representatives in these periods and their political and sectarian dependency, the representatives of five periods of Islamic Consultative Assembly are studied from the viewpoints of age, sexual and educational distribution and representation experience. The results of this research can facilitate the analysis of the reasons and causes of the political movements in Iran in addition to clarifying the trends of political and social developments in the determined historical section.

The understanding of the modern notion of citizenship is mostly based on the sociohistorical and partly legal approaches and the contribution of the philosophical approach is not as considerable as we think it deserves. We attempt in this article to take the Hobbesian roots of the modernist notion of citizenship into consideration from philosophical point of view. We think that Hobbes's political philosophy has the fundamental implications for the new notion of citizenship.These implications are so fundamental that we may speak about Thomas Hobbes as the founder of the modern idea of citizenship. It seems that there are two principles on which he grounded his status as the founder of the modern idea of citizenship:The first is the idea of "individual"; it is one of the most important rupture points that separate the new political philosophy from the pre-modern one and meanwhile the substantial backrest of the some new notions such as the modern citizenship. And the second is replacing the natural law by the natural right or subordinating the natural law to the natural right. This transfiguration led to the individual-based modern state. In this article, we will show that if we can suppose the idea of "the individual possessed unconditional right in the state of nature" as the foundation of the new approach to politics, then we can call Thomas Hobbes as the founder of modern citizenship because he was the original designer of this type of individuality from the political point of view.

International Crisis in 1990s led to gross violation of human rights including mass atrocities, genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing as well. at the end of 1990s it was crystal clear that Humanitarian Intervention doctrine can not give a proper answer to humanitarian disasters. The Humanitarian Intervention doctrine has no Powerful legal bases in International Customary Law and treaty based International Common Law. Deficiencies of this doctrine led the international community towards the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. According to R to P, sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility. R to P makes concentration on prevention and halt of crimes including “genocide, war crimes, crime against humanity”. It recognizes low intensified military measures in case of deadlock of UNSC and failure of all diplomatic means.
Despite the fact that most of international organizations like UNHRC in their frequent reports and resolutions referred to commitment of atrocity crimes in Syria but due to lack of international support the doctrine was not implemented. This article is about to discuss about the legality of Humanitarian Intervention in Syria and the latest development of this doctrine within the framework of Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Regarding the subject matter not only we survey the treaty base International Common Law, Customary International Common Law, UNSC and GA resolutions and documents, international legal texts, practices of states and International organizations but also the author survey the political and security consequences of R to P implementation in Syria.