Exploring Reasons for the Weakness of Iranian Lobbies in the U.S.

The U.S. foreign policy is formulated as a complicated interaction between interest groups, lobbies, politicians and decision makers in which the role of lobbies are very significant. Therefore, most interest groups have lobbies in the U.S., but Iranians lack a powerful lobby. The main question of this article is why there is not an effective Iranian lobby in the U.S. Two possible answers can be given to this question; one is related to the difficulties of Iranians residing in the U.S. and the other concerns the performance of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The first part of the article is a research carried out based on a library study and the second part is a survey conducted using interviews with senior Iranian officials. Based on the results of this research, most barriers on the way of establishing a powerful Iranian lobby which can pursue Iran's interests in the U.S. could be overcome by having a sound planning and a coherent structure and thereby moving towards changing U.S. policy regarding Iran.