The Twenty-year Vision and Iran's Foreign Policy: Permutation Distribution and Future of Iran- US Relations

According to the blueprint of the Twenty-year Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran, by 2025 the country will acquire the status of first-ranking regional power and become the fifth world economic power. The present article looks into the stated aspirations of the Vision blueprint and argues that achievement of such lofty objectives depends on two sets of conditions; the necessary condition of national capacities and the sufficient condition of external environment. As argued in the article, since recent radical changes at the international level have given "world politics" more explanatory power than "international system", the nexus between these two sets of conditions has become all the more important. The authors, however, focus on the review of international considerations governing the relations between Iran (enjoying a secondary strategic status) and the U.S. (enjoying a primary hegemonic status in the world). In more specific terms, the authors address the following two issues: 1) the imperative of due consideration for international factors towards seeking prominent regional status; and 2) possible scenarios in transforming current "oppositional relations" to "interactive relations" (as distinct from band-wagoning) between Iran and the U.S. In their effort to answer these questions, the authors utilize the mathematical tool of permutation distribution and offer suggestions for the two sides to move beyond "oppositional dialectical discourse" towards reaching "interactive correspondent discourse."