فصلنامه مطالعات آسیای مرکزی و قفقاز
پیاپی 113 (بهار 1400)

The economic relations of Iran and the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union have been in recent years influenced by factors such as the international sanctions, lack of a complementary economic relation, Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union’s members’ dependence on sales of raw materials and energy and geo-economic competition. The US re-imposition of sanctions following Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and imposition of economic restrictions, especially in the international trade area, made Iran’s look pivot toward broadening economic ties with its neighbors. Within this framework, the Eurasian Economic Union, due to its low volume of economic relations with the US and the Russian foundations’ dominance over the union, has an appropriate capacity for expanding economic diplomacy, especially under sanctions. The Islamic Republic of Iran, with concluding preferential trade contracts, is trying to compensate for the restrictions created by the US sanctions. The main question of this paper is that, what opportunities does the economic diplomacy of Iran put ahead of the Iranian economy under the sanctions conditions? In this regard, this presumption is put to test that Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union’s economic diplomacy provides grounds for strategic cooperation between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union in the long term by opening a new trade space through reducing tariffs, using the existing capacities of the union and by circumventing  the economic sanctions. The method used in this paper is based on causal explanation as well as collecting information by use of first-hand sources and analysis of the country’s officials’ interviews.

The reforms of the Russian Constitution in 2020 represent the largest and most important constitutional changes since the advent of Russia's new political system in 1993 until now. While clarifying the main dimensions of these reforms, this article emphasizes a special type of indigenous democracy in Russia called "sovereign democracy" or "guided democracy" and tries to answer the question of whether the 2020 constitutional reforms are a sign of

Gaining political independence and sovereignty, at the end of the unification process, confronted Germany with new foreign policy challenges. On the other hand, The Russian Federation, as the successor to the collapsed empire of the Soviet Union, seeks to limit the damages caused by this collapse by creating new structures in its foreign policy strategies at the regional and global levels. Meanwhile, Central Asia has become an important area for the activation of regional and trans-regional powers , due to the political and geographical situation created after the demise of the bipolar system, because it is rich in huge hydrocarbon resources. Thus, Germany and Russia have defined broad interests for themselves due to reasons such as the membership of the Central Asian republics in the former Soviet Union, as well as the presence of German and Russian minorities in the region that has changed the nature of relations between the two countries in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Germany. Therefore, this article intends to ask the question, with a descriptive-analytical method and based on the theoretical framework of constructivism, whether the relationship between Germany and the Russian Federation in Central Asia is cooperative or competitive in nature? The results of this article indicate that the relations between the two countries, despite their ups and downs and the lack of trust between the two sides, had a cooperative and stable nature in the Central Asian region and commercial, economic, and energy priorities are at the core of these relationships.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has, since the 2000s, stressed an eastward policy and the relations with Russia have been a major part of this policy, and this issue, especially in the years 2005 to 2014, has been more seriously pursued in the stated and practical policies. But the main matter in these relations is that, despite an eastward look in the Iranian foreign policy during those years, in practice the political ties were limited during that era followed by reduction of economic exchanges, and in this regard, the impact of the international sanctions, the sanctions approved by the UNSC which were supported by western and eastern countries, has been of great importance, and therefore, this question arises that how far and to what extent have the international sanctions impacted the reduction of Tehran-Moscow relations in the era of eastward policy? The pivotal idea of this paper is that “ the reduction of the two countries’ relations is more influenced by the international sanctions and these sanctions, due to Russia’s compliance with the international normative and security regimes resulted from international agreements and Russia’s approval of the UNSC resolutions  in sanctioning Iran, on one side, and the binding nature of these sanctions, on the other side, have severely reduced the relations of the two sides and made Iran’s eastward policy faced with challenges.” In this paper, for showing the relation of sanctions to the two countries’ ties, the method of codependence of variables has been used and for analyzing the reasons why Russia joined the sanctions resolutions of the UN against Iran, the method of Qualitative Analysis of the existing data in libraries, websites, and the views of some experts has been employed.

As a new entity, ISIL has carried out the most violent actions under the flag of Islam and pursued the idea of forming “Welayat-i-Khorasan” in its governmental vision. According to this perspective and subsequent steps such as the announcement of the existence of ISIL raises the question of what implications the strengthening of ISIL's presence in Afghanistan will have for the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Based on the Delphi method as one of the well- known techniques in futures studies, the paper has tried to explore different aspects of the issue by taking advantage of the opinions of elites and prominent experts of Afghanistan affairs. In order to answer the above question, seventeen experts on Afghanistan issues who were selected through the Snowball sampling method answered questions about the various aspects of this issue during four Delphi rounds and out of 19 questions, 14 of them came to a consensus. The findings indicate that the strengthening of the presence of ISIL threatens the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran both domestically and internationally. Opportunities such as expansion of technical and intelligence cooperation or establishing regional and international arrangements are likely subject to do so, but are not significant in comparison to the threats posed. Also, regarding the current differences in the form and nature of ISIL's presence in Syria and Afghanistan, it seems that not only Iran cannot choose the exposure method of Syria but also must not do so.

The European Union’s joint security and foreign policy towards Russia has gone through numerous unwanted ups and downs after the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially over the last two decades, due to various reasons although during the post-collapse conditions hopes for integration of Russia with Europe had been strengthened. Some causal premises are more important in this regard such as complexity of relations from a historical standpoint, the impact of contradictory norm-value sources on the EU’s decision-making  towards Russia, lack of sanctions  of the enactments of the EU in the security and foreign policy area, priority of a national policy  and lack of consistency among the members in implementing the decisions, conflicting multifaceted political, military and security conditions and in the end, mutual dependence, especially in the energy sector. Considering the above-mentioned concepts, the question of this paper is that “why the European Union’s joint security and foreign policy towards Russia has had serious changes and vacillations  after 2000?” the primary response is that the European Union’s joint security and foreign policy has been, on one hand, under pressure from geo-political considerations and energy security for cooperation with Russia, on the other hand, has been under the impact of practical inconsistency in this sector among the EU members and necessity of adopting  a confrontational policy against the Russian dominance to remove the regional worries, and this has made the European Union’s joint security and foreign policy towards Russia vacillate. The method used in this paper is of Analytical-Qualitative type.