The Possibilities of Cooperation between Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq in Combating Terrorism in Line with the General Policies of the System

Security, fighting insecurity and development are three important factors in every country, so thinkers have tried to find a relationship between them. Developing this relationship in developing countries such as Iran and Iraq considering the security approach is deeply difficult. On the other hand, middle east is a geo-political area which has common positive and negative aspects of the countries, which can on its own account, result in opportunities and threats. The internal challenges and the external threats has made middle east a fragile area. However, one can identify internal strengths and external opportunities which can bring along coherence, development, and security among the countries. Iran and Iraq have cooperation on the one hand, and opportunities and challenges on the other, some of which are related to the internal environment and some others to their regional and international spheres. To be coherent, they need a model based on the internal and external elements that can soothe the challenges at the expense of the opportunities. That being said, the chances for the security cooperation between Iran and Iraq has been stated in line with the general policies of the system. This study focuses on the following question: what impact does the security cooperation in national and international level have on the counter-terrorism plans (regional and international) of Iran and Iraq? To answer this, it is hypothesized that the counter-terrorism plans can bring the two countries closer from the political and security aspects to be more in line in combating against terrorism. To test out this hypothesis, after some theoretical and historical studies, a descriptive-analytical method was used to convergence theory between the two countries from the perspective of counter-terrorism and convergence. Then, the security and counter-terrorism plans were content-analyzed. Afterwards, it was attempted to investigate the geo-political realities of the region so that a convergence model for the region could be designed.