FOREIGN RELATIONS
Year:2016 | Volume:7 | Issue:4 (28)|Papers Count:9

Sanctions have been the most controversial debate in Iran's foreign policy and economic relations during the last decade. The comprehensiveness and interweaving nature of sanctions created many difficulties for different political and economic institutions, and many obstacles for economic growth. The JCPOA deal and the country's entrance into international community entail many opportunities and positive consequences. This article studies Iran's economic crisis under sanctions which especially affected economic institutions like banks and then addresses economic challenges and opportunities facing Iran in the post-sanctions era. The main questions are that how sanctions affected Iran's economic situation, what are opportunities and challenges facing the country, and how Iran can use existing opportunities to ensure its economic interests? The authors believe that the JCPOA deal is a turning point in the I.R.I's politics and foreign relations which can create economic and political opportunities; however, it entails some challenges as well. It should be said that if after a ten year period of isolation, necessary conditions for joining international trade- an effort requiring sound planning, policy-making and monitoring- are not met, the economic system will face much more difficulties. Therefore, this article, while outlining losses made due to international sanctions, especially in international communications and trade sectors, introduces JCPOA document and its effects on different sectors, particularly economic institutions, examines opportunities and challenges facing the country in the period following the JCPOA deal, and present some recommendations regarding preparing the necessary for joining international community.

In recent decades, the important part of the dominant issue in relations between European Union (EU) and other countries has been human rights. The European Union under the clauses of Maastreicht Treaty which came in force in 1992 made respecting human rights for third world countries as an essential element and showed much more sensitivity to human rights. Concerning the EU relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Southern states of Persian Gulf, this has always been the case. This article reviews the European Union's human rights policy towards Iran and Bahrain in a Comparative manner. This article tries to analyze the violations of human rights standards as defined by the European Union, towards Iran and Bahrain, and also reviews the effect of its behavior on foreign policy of the European Union towards these two countries.

This article tries to explain relations between Turkey and Russia. Given the theoretical and practical limitations of interdependence theory, the author seeks to analyze and explain the dominant dynamics of these relations by using assumptions made by the theory of realism regarding cooperation and conflict during the period between 2001 to 2015. Considering political and economic convergence of the two countries between the years 201-2010 as well as their political and security divergence following changes in the regional common strategic environment (2011), the main question is that given the limitations inherent in the interdependence theory, which variables are involved in explaining cooperation and conflict patterns in relations between Turkey and Russian? The findings of research show that the role of trade and especially energy in bolstering cooperation between Turkey and Russian is heavily dependent on a positive security atmosphere and security issues determine cooperation and conflict patterns between the two countries. Although economic interdependence facilitates political cooperation, convergent security interests resulting from external changes has been the main driving force in expanding cooperation between Russia and Turkey between the year 2001-2010. Therefore, cooperation between Turkey and Russia is conditioned by convergence in security interests in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Black Sea, while divergence between in the strategic environment created following revolutionary developments in the Middle East has held to conflict between them after 2010.

This article tries to study the political economy of Daesh, and its funding sources. Given the fact that the linear systems approach can no longer respond to questions faced by researchers in the field of international political economy, this article regardless of traditional approaches in political economy, seeks to study the extensive network of funding terrorist groups based on the theory of complex network and its two "small world" and "scale-free" models. Its main hypothesis is that anti-systemic actors in international relations such as Daesh help order management system to function and are used for shifting strategic targets. The findings of research show that the network approach enables us to interoduce the global and regional order model, and triple geopolitical, geoeconomic and geocultural model into the analyses of political economy of terrorism based on the fuzzy logic, relying upon new epistemology and the rejection of constant and presupposed identity to form an empirically and theoretically pluralistic political economy.

Industrial-military complexes have acquired much power and influence as a result of U.S. militaristic policies. They have managed to gain much influence on formulating U.S. defense policies as an interest group in competition with other similar groups. In collaboration with neo-conservatives and by exploiting the September 11 events which created a new opportunity for the U.S to adopt aggressive and hegemonic policies, they played a major role in defense policy-making in the U.S. which led to the more aggressive character of U.S. defense policies since George W. Bush took office. Given that, the main question is that what role industrial-military complexes played in changing U.S defense strategy? To answer this question, the authors test the hypothesis that following September 11 events, industrial-military complexes played an essential role in making U.S>defense policies more aggressive. The research method used in this article is analytical-descriptive, and to explain the subject matter of article, the authors use pluralistic decision-making model.

Political stability and security are the main concerns of governments. They are defined as the absence of serious and destructive threats and challenges and not minor changes which are necessary for the dynamism and sustainability of any political and social system. Since the last quarter of 20th century, governments, especially authoritarian ones faced security threats and challenges due to the effects of the spread of democratic movements, communications revolution, globalization, generational change and increasing political and social dissent. In this article, the authors try to answer the questions that why recent social movements in the region, called Arab Spring did not spread into the United Arab Emirates? And why this country despite having the highest number of Internet users and social networks was not affected by social movement? To do this, they use a causal-explanatory methodology. The most important reasons in this regard (research hypothesis) are: structure of non-indigenous population enjoying majority (85%) and their conservatism because of political-economic reasons and their lack of right of citizenship, functional legitimacy of government in economic and welfare field traditional and religious legitimacy of the government, increasing tendency among users for using Internet as an instrument for entertainment, trade, communications and non-political purposes, and limitations imposed by the government on the capacities of social networks, especially regarding political links. The findings of research confirm the effect of all these reasons on political stability and the lack of the emergence of a revolutionary movement in this country following the advent of Arab Spring.