نشریه مطالعات خاورمیانه
سال سی‌ام شماره 3 (پیاپی 113، پاییز 1402)

The authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia are preparing the North-South Corridor, a joint project related to international transportation, which the designers say, if it is put into operation, it can be a part of the cargo and Reduce shipping through the Suez Canal. Currently, 12% of world trade is carried out through the Suez Canal. A Serbian analyst believes that the problem of Iran and Russia's strategic planning to complete this corridor, which goes from the southern ports of Iran to Astara and from there to Russia through Azerbaijan, is the lack of guarantees in the near future. Nikola Mikovich says: Two countries have been discussing this project for more than 20 years, but the construction of the railway has financial, logistical and political problems. Nevertheless, Iran and Russia have a strong desire to launch it, believing that they can use it to bypass sanctions. Even if Moscow and Tehran manage to complete the basic sea and land route of this corridor, the tense relations between Tehran and Baku in the land part of this route will be significant. If this corridor passes through Azerbaijan, Moscow and Tehran will heavily rely on Baku, Turkey's ally in NATO. It is worth mentioning that this 7200 km long corridor starts from the south of the Indian Ocean, the Oman Sea and the Strait of Hormuz and connects to the Caspian Sea from Iranian ports and from there it reaches the interior of Russia and finally St. Petersburg. In this way, it connects Southwest Asia to Europe. From the Indian port of Mumbai to St. Petersburg, instead of 30 and 45 days, the transportation of goods through the Suez Canal will be reduced to a maximum of 10 days. Another problem that exists in the way of this corridor is the country of Finland, which has recently joined NATO. .

Investigating the current state of political currents after the Arab revolutions, especially in Tunisia, is one of the multifaceted, complex, and multi-layered issues in political studies, especially in political thought. In this regard, according to the developments of the Ennahda movement in Tunisia between the years 2011-2023 (August), the question has been raised that according to the intellectual tradition of the Ennahda movement, the model and political behavior of this movement, from which rule. Philosophical and political - civil democratic transformation with an Islamic reading or adjustment and deviation from the propositions of Islamic thought? In response, the proposed hypothesis states that the intellectual tradition of the Ennahda movement has moved from classical theology and thought to a new reform with the reading of civil democratic Islam. The findings indicate that this current has been influenced by the intellectual developments in response to the dualism of the West / Islam and the mystery of tradition and modernity, intellectual traditions such as the rationalist school of Al-Zaytouniyeh, and reformist (general) intellectuals. It is oriented from classical theology to reform problematic. From an empirical point of view, the constituent elements of the theoretical and methodical model of the Ennahda movement represent a continuous and relatively uniform approach, and its secular and civil aspects share commonalities with Tunisian non-Islamist movements. With the successful transition of this process from the first stage of challenges (passing Ansar al-Sharia and inevitable - sometimes unstable - consensuses), the second stage began after the dissolution of the parliament and the holding of the second round of the 2019 parliamentary elections, and a new game It was formed from competitions. As a result, the Ennahda movement is trying to push the "extra-legal" and undemocratic dictatorship of the Qais Saeed government towards democratic policies or transfer of power. The conceptual framework is based on a multi-level reading of political thought (ideological evolutions, currents and intellectual systems, and late intellectuals of each discourse) and extraction of influential components and elements to evaluate the issue; the method of collecting materials is library and internet.

Islamism has been seen in various forms and manifestations in different countries. This means it has come along with a full spectrum of reformative, revolutionary, secular, socialistic features mixed with various political beliefs. Tunisia is one of the most important Muslim countries in which analyzing the Islamism could provide explanative points due to different experiences and changes that happened there. On this basis, the present paper aims to examine the causing factors of Tunisian Islamism starting to go in the direction of political secularism while focusing on the Al-Nahda movement. The question is that What are the most important reasons of the transition of the Al-Nahda movement as a representative of Tunisian Islamism into a political secularism? The proposed hypothesis is that existence of the roots of secularism, the revolutionary identity of Al-Nahda movement, dialectic opposition and lack of dialectic dominance by Islamists in Tunisia, as well as the access to a secular democracy as an available model have been amongst the reasons the Tunisian Islamism started to progress in direction of political secularism through the Al-Nahda. The results of this study suggest that the characteristics of Islam culture within the Tunisian society as the bedrock of political and social changes on one hand and the availability of an efficient secular and democratic argument within the society on the other hand caused the Tunisian Islamism to move in direction of forming a political party instead of continuing towards a revolutionary and ideological procedure. The present paper is a descriptive analysis using the documentary and library resources. We have benefitted from Manheim’s sociology of knowledge framework and Laclau-Mouffe dialectic in a blended method.

Usually, sociopolitical changes in the Middle East are the result of the factual or erroneous thinking of thinkers and experts. Among the characteristics of thought in a specific meaning is that it has "normative and prescriptive" approaches and seeks to "solve issues and problems" or "progress" societies. One of the ways to understand the causes of problems and issues in the Middle East countries, including Iran, is to recognize the difficulties and problems of thinking. The problems of thinking in Middle East countries are multifaceted and complex. The issue and purpose of this article is to understand the difficulties and problems of thinking in Middle East countries. The main question of the article is that thoughts and thinking in Iran and similar Middle Eastern countries have what difficulties and problems related to thinkers. The article first explains the specific meaning of thought and thinking and its types and applications. Then three categories of difficulties and problems of thinking in Middle Eastern countries with an emphasis on Iran are discussed. The findings of the research reveals that political thinking in these countries suffer from three categories of problems and damages: First problems caused by the eclectic structure of thoughts, second, the problems directed to the type of attitude towards sociopolitical phenomena, and the problems arising from the cultural foundations of Middle Eastern societies

In general, the classification of political ideas and confrontation of Middle Eastern ideational currents into three famous traditionalists, modernist, and reformist categories was founded on a master-statement named tradition/modernity or old/new conflict. This master-statement and the classification based on it have found a solid place in Middle East studies and have rarely included in the fundamental and, of course, immanent criticism. The developments known as the Arab Spring on the one hand, and the increasingly complex future of the Middle East in the light of the waves of the fourth generation of technology have made it necessary to revise this statement and change it. Relying on this classification weakens the understanding of the critical intellectual-political developments in the Middle East today and in the future, and revising it can increase the analytical power on Middle East political studies. The main question is, what are the implications of revising the tradition/modernity statement for political studies in the Middle East? The main goal of the article is to challenge this master-statement and prepare the theoretical foundations to establishment a political ontogenesis of Middle East. Gilbert Simondon's individuation theory and his special genetic method have been used to achieve this goal.

The subjectivity and agency of mainly Muslim women in the Middle East has always neglected, and their presence and participation in the public arena has limited due to the legacy of cultural traditions left from the past and patriarchal interpretations of religious texts. From the beginning of the Islamic Renaissance movement in the second half of the 19th century in the Middle East until now, the issue of women has always been an inseparable part of this movement, and all other intellectual currents have addressed it in one way or another. With the rise of Islamism in the Middle East, not only was there no improvement in the status of women, but the view of women as a tool prevented them from realizing their ideal of liberation and legal equality. Since the end of the 20th century, a new intellectual movement known as post-Islamism emerged in the Middle East, which has sparked recent debates on women. The question that we address in this article is: what is the difference between the attitude of Islamism and post-Islamism towards the issue of women, and what effect has this had on the movement for equality and freedom of women in the Middle East? By using a documentary method and descriptive-explanatory approach, we tried to find a suitable answer to this question by using secondary data. Studies show that the attitude of post-Islamism in comparison to Islamism arouses more hope for the realization of the ideal of liberation and equality, and the women of the Middle East today have more hope for their future in the light of this discourse and are more determined than in the past to overcome historical obstacles and they take a step in the public arena with their culture of inclusive participation.

Since the September 11, 2001, there have been many debates about the relationship between fascism and Islamism. In the meantime, some have mentioned the term “Islamic fascism”, which has also brought criticism. With the emergence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and its crimes while this interpretation became more popular, it seems that a more accurate comparison between these two currents is needed. In the following paper, in addition to the definitions of fascism and radical Islamism, attention has been paid to the expression of different approaches in the field of the relationship between these two movements and ideologies and their points of commonality and difference. Based on this, the question is about the relationship between radical Islamism, focusing on the example of ISIS & Fascism. The accepted approach of this paper is based on Walter Laqueur’s theory that although these two ideologies and movements have many points in common with each other, they cannot be considered equivalent to each other. In fact, it seems that ISIS due to rising from the ashes of war and instability, reactionary modernism, elimination of differences, social conservatism and the sanctification of death and violence - and despite some differences - is the closest modern movement and ideology to fascism, Especially the fact that these characteristics, like the experience of fascism, have caused historicism, mobilizationism, exclusivism and oppression. The present qualitative study is based on a descriptive-analytical approach using library documents.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of research approach. The data collection method is using library and internet sources. Artificial intelligence is a new technology that briefly means the ability of a computer system to perform tasks that usually requires human intelligence. from the point of view of soft balance theoretical approach, we answered this question "What effect does artificial intelligence have on the future of regional competitions?" and for answering the mentioned question, hypotheses in the format: "It seems that with the advancement of artificial intelligence in the Middle East, we will witness a shift in power from the hardware domains to the software domains relying on new technologies" was raised. In this research, the position of artificial intelligence in the Middle East region and the role and impact of artificial intelligence in the following dimensions: military-defense, security-political, economic and environmental in the studied countries including: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and the future of regional competitions was studied. The findings of the research indicate that the concept of power and the means of its application have always changed and are currently under the influence of new developments that have emerged in the international system; Including the appearance of new technologies and artificial intelligence, the nature of power has also changed, so to respond to the new developments that have a complex nature; relying only on military weapons will not be enough, but also new technologies should be used in all areas, which has drastically changed the power structure, effective actors and the future of regional competitions.

A movement known as "Al-Sahwa Al-Islamiyya" progressively emerged in Saudi Arabia with the entry of Muslim brothers in the 1960s and 1970s. Sahwa's theoretical foundations combined Wahabi views with the political Islam of Muslim brothers. It was able to broaden its membership in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, an examination of its activities from the time of its founding until the 1990s shows that it never formed a collective action to challenge the Saudi regime—rather, its activities were restricted to the cultural, social, and educational spheres. This essay aims to provide an answer to the issue of what conditions or elements contributed to its development until it emerged in the political arena and began to undermine the Saudi Kingdom's religious and political legitimacy. The core argument of this study is that Sahwa's emergence cannot be attributed solely to US forces' presence during the Gulf War; rather, several factors, including the war itself as the most important one, allowed Sahwa to mobilize its forces and eventually transform into a social movement. Thus, using seven variables, an examination of the intricate complex of internal and external elements contributing to Sahwa's growth was conducted. From the standpoint of political sociology, in fact, a complex of these factors caused the distinct religious and political spheres as well as two different social groups, namely Sahwi ulema and intelligentsia, through forming a fragile coalition, to mobilize social forces against the Saudi regime and express their demands through several petitions to inform Malek Fahd.