The Security Thinking of the West and the Post-Cold War Security Threat: the Case Study of Iranian Nuclear Issue

The end of cold war resulted in the emergence of a new security thinking in the west on the sources of threat to international security and the way of managing them. This is the prism through which the American and European security thinking have evolved on the Iranian nuclear issue. In this research, the development of the western securitythinking on Iranian nuclear file is tackled through raising and answering the following questions: “What are the foundations of western thinking on international security after the cold war?” and “How is Iranian nuclear issue relevant to this thinking?” In responseto these questions, the present paper argues that there is a need for combination of neo realist and constructivist theories of international relations in which both the structure of international politics as well as the constructed identities and security notion of the ruling elites should be tackled simultaneously.