FOREIGN RELATIONS
Year:2015 | Volume:6 | Issue:4 (24)|Papers Count:7

Scientific products, especially academic articles, can be regarded as one of the major indicators of the status of a field of study. This article, by focusing on articles published in Iranian peer-reviewed journals, seeks to present a critical evaluation of the field of foreign policy analysis in Iran. Since the major interest in this field is Iran's foreign policy, 135 articles with such a focus published from 2009 to 2014 were evaluated. The articles were analyzed in terms of their methodological approach, theoretical frameworks, research strategy, types of data, and topics. The findings show that although in some aspects most of the articles follow a general positivist approach, other characteristics of articles do not match this general orientation. Realism has been proved to be the main theoretical framework applied, FPA approaches have been applied in few cases, and little has been done to develop an endogenous theory to explain Iran's foreign policy.

Persian myths had much impact on Iranians' political and international attitude during the history. This article seeks to show Persian myths as an inter subjective and semantic construct and an element of national identity influencing the construction of Persian identity, Iranian international attitudes and their definition of self-other and their foreign environment, drawing upon the constructivism. It is obvious that besides the semantic construct, another important semantic constructs such as history, religion, customs, Persian language, and etc have had great influence on constructing Persian identity. Of course, all these semantic constructs in connection with each other have formed Persian identity. So, the question is: What is the function of Persian myths on Persian identity and Iranian international attitudes to the International System? In response, this hypothesis can be advanced: Persian myths as one of the most common and semantic constructs in the minds and thoughts of all Iranians have played an integrating and coordinating role in Persian identity and Iranians' international attitudes to International System, by expressing Iranians' characteristics presenting the population element, by defining Iranian society as a nation-state presenting the government element and To prove this claim, the themes and concepts of Persian myths have been studied and their functions have been considered in various periods of the history of Iran.

The Persian Gulf is considered an important region in the world because of its strategic and geo-economic aspects. The strategic aspect of the Persian Gulf has long been a challenging issue for regional and trans-regional powers and constituted the most important factor affecting security and stability in the region. The aim of this article is to investigate the factors determining the level of divergence and instability in the Persian Gulf region, based on Maslow hierarchy of needs. Due to the uncertainty in the Persian Gulf, how to design an appropriate security arrangement is the main question which can be raised here. Therefore, our hypothesis suggests that the divergence of geopolitical geo-economic and geo-culture factors led to the formation of the Persian Gulf system based on the needs of the biological security. As a result, the security prevails in the paradigm of integration in the region and the pattern of self-security and security in the Persian Gulf. This article discusses the concept of security, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and its application to security model, and the divergence of Persian Gulf security and regional strategies for the appropriate security arrangement.

Iran and the United States have experienced more than three decades of conflictual relations. Although there have been chances for resolution of their conflict, all conflict resolution initiatives have failed. Despite this, the interim nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States (in the framework of Iran-P5+1) in November 2013, has revived arguments about the possibility of the resolution of the nuclear conflict, despite failure of all the past reconciliatory initiatives? In response to this question and relying on Ripeness Theory, the main argument of this article is that the start of direct negotiations between Iran and the United States and reaching a nuclear agreement are due to the ripeness of the Iran-U.S. conflict as a result of a mutual hurting nuclear stalemate. Along with examination of this hypothesis, the article studies the factors hindering the resolution conflict between the two countries under the condition of ripeness and presents four scenarios for the future of the nuclear conflict resolution and its impact on the resolution of the two countries overall conflict.

Iran-US relations have experienced many important ideological conflicts and strategic rivalries during the last two decades. These rivalries particularly intensified in the Middle East region and sometimes led the two countries into the verge of direct military confrontation. However, the kind of Iran-US relations in Iraq shows a different pattern suggesting a tendency for discarding macro strategic rivalries and engaging into some implicit and indirect cooperation by the two sides. Contrary to the two existing views on Iran-US relations in Iraq namely, full-scale strategic interactions and cooperation and their complete rivalry and confrontation, this article argues that despite ideological conflicts and strategic rivalries between the I.R. Iran and the U.S. in the Middle East and their relative competition in Iraq, geopolitical constraints in this field and the existence of common threats facing both Tehran and Washington have led the two countries to a kind of implicit and indirect cooperation. As a result, emerging challenges and threats originated by Iraq's special geopolitical environment have overshadowed the strategic goals of Iran and the U.S. in Iraq and their rivalries paving the way for implicit cooperation between the two countries in this field.

Following the emergence of "ISIS" or "Daesh" group and the seizure of parts of Syria and Iraq by this extremist group, this danger has created in European countries that the Muslims who have departed to Syria for participating in military operations to overthrow Assad government, after returning to their homeland threaten the internal security of European countries through committing terrorist acts. Past terrorist activities in these countries and recent attack on Charlie Hebdo's office in Paris have intensified these concerns. For this reason, European countries adopted harsh security measures for preventing the entrance of these individuals into the country and to prevent extremism among resident Muslims. But, the important issue is that why European Muslims tend to extremism and violent acts. This article tries to answer the question that what are the causes of the tendency among European Muslims for extremist views and committing violence? The hypothesis advanced in this article is that social and individual factors at two macro and micro levels can explain the behavior of individuals in the form of tendency for extremist beliefs and violent acts. This article argues that factors at the macro level explain the environment conducive to Muslims' tendency for such beliefs but understanding the fact that which groups of individuals accept such beliefs can be explained by factors at the micro level. Macro factors which exist in the society and micro factors which are related to the personal character of individuals, combined together, lead individuals to extremism. The unfavorable situation of social and economic life of Muslims in Europe along with pressures exerted on them in terms of subsistence and identity considerations manifested by discrimination and inequality in combination with some psychological features of individuals in interaction with their surrounding environment.

Understanding American NGOs and their role in the U.S. foreign policy requires the study of their nature and activities. The historical role of foreign assistance in promoting U.S. foreign policy goals, on the one hand, and the influence of activities and programs of American voluntary agencies in the form of foreign aid on the other hand, have made inevitable that a link established between U.S. foreign policy and American voluntary agencies. For this reason, since the World War II, these agencies have played an important role in the U.S. efforts in international development. Therefore, these agencies have been a function of U.S. policies and undergone many ups and downs. In practice, these agencies implement a job requested by the U.S. government as a part of its foreign policy. This article, which covers the beginning of the World War II to the end of the second George Bush presidency, tries to understand the link between American NGOs and the U.S. foreign policy. The findings of the research show that whenever the public budget has increased, these agencies have become more dependent on the government and thus, they have become more coordinated with the U.S. foreign policy. Also, it was shown that during the activities of these agencies, lasting about 70 years, whenever the government needed to further its policies through foreign aid, it allocated significant budget to these agencies. This has affected the performance of these agencies reflected in consistency between agencies and government.