Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Volume:3 Issue: 3, Fall 2012

Obama’s reelection has opened up some key questions on the direction of his policy in domestic and foreign domains. Iran is one of the most significant foreign policy issues he has to deal with. What would form his decisions and course of action towards Iran? Answering this question is not an easy task. However three points need to be kept in mind. First, Obama will encounter a variety of cognitive and practical traps. One trap will be the intellectual misreading of Iran, and being imprisoned in the ossified American perception of Iran. The other is the trap of third parties in the US-Iran relationship which try to radicalize and militarize the regional context, i.e. the right wing in Israel and some among the G.C.C security elites. Second, Obama may become a game changer provided that he recognizes the legitimate concerns and security interests of Iran and departs from the entrenched prevailing mentality which aims at limiting, containing and even destroying Iran. This conditional turn may serve him a legacy different from the others. Third, in the Iran-US relationship, Iran is a player and not just an object. This means, all American pronouncements and actions will be interpreted and responded accordingly. In this framework, the regional context is very important.

This article focuses on the security architecture of the Persian Gulf. Since the British left the Persian Gulf in 1971, maintaining the security of this strategic body of water has been a major concern for the governments of the region and for those who depend on energy supply from this region. Four decades later, after a revolution, three major wars, and regime changes in the region, defining a security system for the Persian Gulf remains a significant challenge. This article reviews the past security arrangements in the Persian Gulf and proposes a new framework for Persian Gulf security. Study of previous and current security patterns in the region reveal that the existing security frameworks have failed to ensure stability and led to massive direct military confrontations in the Persian Gulf. The authors argue that the failed strategies and theories of balance of power and arms race would intensify the atmosphere of mistrust and animosity in the region. They suggest that any meaningful security arrangement should involve all major regional actors the Persian Gulf. They conclude that common security can only be achieved through comprehensive security architecture in the region. Although they insist that achieving this objective needs confidence-building measures to be considered by regional actors.

This article tries to apply discourse analysis, as a research framework, to Iran’s foreign policy. Discourse analysis of foreign policy mostly focuses on language and rhetoric used by policy makers. Discourse analysis is not only related to comments and speeches made by Iranian officials, it also puts to test behavior which takes place in social context.To this end, the author explores main political discourses shaping Iranian identity and foreign policy behavior since the Islamic Revolution. These discourses impose a particular revolutionary language on Iranian foreign policy, and give meanings to the country’s foreign policy behavior. This article assumes Iran’s foreign policy, initially and before starting its interactions with the international community, has been subject to revolutionary discourses as major resource for the country’s definition of its identity and interests. This discourse assumed to be a revolutionary identity: it is occasionally strengthened or moderated due to aggressive or non-aggressive normative environment at the international level. The discursive context at both the domestic and international levels will help us understand confrontational and non-confrontational relations between Iran and the western countries in post revolutionary era.

This writing tries to examine and analyze political and ideological stances adopted by Iran and Turkey towards the recent Arab revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, the main question is to what extent the Arab revolutions have affected the level of cooperation and disputes between the two states. Certainly Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman policy as new Turkish foreign policy discourse has deeply influenced Ankara-Tehran relations, after the Islamists came to power. That is to say that Turkey’s new foreign policy and its exceptional horizons in the Justice and Development Party’s Islamist strategy have posed new challenges to Iran’s increasing diplomatic activities in the Middle East. From this perspective, This paper argues that Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman discourse towards the recent Arab revolutions in the region has caused tensions between the two countries in the new politico-security settings of the Middle East.

Major nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998 changed the face of the region strategically. This development along with continued tensions in relations between India and Pakistan, developments in U.S. relations with India make the study of the consequences of the two countries’ nuclear program indispensable. This research will try to examine the implications of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan for the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The research will show that Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests initially internationalized security environment in Iran’s eastern region. It also concludes that the region has become less secure as a result of the tests, further heightening international pressures on Iran’s nuclear program.

The end of the Cold War changed Germany's political geography and increased its international clout. Germany's reunification and its easier access to the political and economic space of Central and Eastern Europe enhanced Germany’s overall power within the European Union. With its increasing economic strength and robust exporting capacity, it was poised to emerge as an even greater international actor in the global arena, although its strengths were markedly different from those of traditional great powers such as Russia and the United States. The new Germany's global capacity led to the redefinition of its external relations with many countries including Iran. This article attempts to analyze Germany's evolving geopolitical power dynamic and its implications for relations between the EU and Iran which in turn experienced a similar upsurge in potential opportunities with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regaining of access to Central Asia and the Caucasus which had been integral parts of the Persian Empire until the first quarter of the 19 century.

The way to interact with Iran has always been a controversial issue in transatlantic relations. The American and European positions towards Iran has witnessed many ups and downs in the past three decades and based on different developments, both sides have had different stances. The main question of this article is that" what has been the dominant model in the transatlantic positions regarding Iran in the past three decades"? Comparing American and European position's towards Iran, the level of convergence and divergence of these actors will be scrutinized. Our findings indicate that the trend of transatlantic positions could be divided in to three stages. In the first stage which starts from the victory of the Islamic Revolution till the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States and the European countries share common concerns and try to contain the Revolutionary Iran. The second stage is coincided with some major international developments such as the end of Cold War, the Persian Gulf War (1991) and Iran's domestic developments including the end of imposed war and Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency. In this period, there could be seen apparent gaps and differences in transatlantic policies. The third stage, up on which we mainly focus, begins with the introduction of Iran's nuclear file and the American attempts to convince the Europeans to limit and to contain Iran's nuclear program which finally led to a sharp convergence in these countrie's positions. What is of great significance in this stage is a shift in European Union's policies (negotiation and interaction) in comparison with those of America's Approach (imposing sanctions and containment).

Energy security is one of the relatively new terms in international relations literature which has become a subject of debate in recent years in academic and political circles. Efforts at achieving energy security not only enjoy a privileged place in the foreign policies of industrialized nations like Japan, but it has also entered the agendas of industrializing countries such as India. Both groups seek to provide the grounds for further safe and reliable access, to imported energy resources. Considering the energy security policies in the diplomatic apparatus of these two powerful Asian countries, this research intends to examine these policies towards Iran as one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world, which also possesses one of the globe’s biggest natural gas reserves. We will examine what approach these two Asian countries have adopted in order to attain their energy security through Iran in the past decades and what impacts this has left on their economic and diplomatic relations with Iran. The author will seek to illuminate the role the structure of the international system plays in shaping the energy security strategies and policies pursued by these two states.