WORLD POLITICS
Year:2019 | Volume:8 | Issue:2 (28)|Papers Count:9

What is important these days in the Middle East is the continuation of conflict. The existing literature in the Middle East studies is pretty much engaged with the issue of beginning and protraction of conflict. Despite of some hopes for more attention to issue of development in the 21th century, American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 heralded another round of conflicts in the region. Among the many countries facing crisis, Iraq has been very much outstanding at least from 2003. Why is Iraq so much enmeshed in crisis and conflict? To find an answer, this article tries to utilize a four dimensional tick recognition model in order to examine the rise of ISIS in Iraq. Historical narratives, self-realizations, ontological security and hubristic identity are considered as four dimensions related to recognition which may help explain the situation in Iraq. Our main argument is that failing tick recognition in these four dimensions in Iraq has led to the rise of violent groups in this country.

The relation between climate changes, agricultural policies, and water crisis with national and international security has become the subject of great concern among international organizations, research institutes, and independent scholars. This crisis could cause a chain of other crises such as energy, water, and food crisis in national, regional, and international level. It could also affect the function and stability of the whole system. Syria is one of the countries which has been affected harshly by current climate changes in the Middle East in the past two decades. Alongside historical, political, and economic factors that contributed in formation of Syria’ s crisis, agriculture and water crises also played a devastating and powerful role; but have not received enough attention. The aim of the current article is to focus on 2006-2010 drought and evaluate the role of the Syrian governments’ agricultural polices as well as climate changes and food scrutiny as an important factor in the increasing of objections among Syrian citizens.

The middle East over the years after cold war has been encountered various insecure events such as war, separatism, social insurgencies, terror, arms race, security delimma and terrorist groups development and activities. The evaluation of Middle East changes in the last three decades indicates the "weakness of the state" factor as the main cause of emergence of insurgencies. Accordingly, this research by means of explanative-analytic method seeks to answer the question of 'how the impact of the "weakness of state " of the region ( case studies of Iraq and Syria) causes the appearance and emergence of Middle East insecurities after cold war'. Findings of the research indicate that the process of nation-state building in the Middle East has occurred incompletely and this issue besides the weakening of 'States' structure including “ idea” , “ institution” , “ physical bases” in the Middle East, and the intensity of their dysfunctionality in military, political, social, economic and environmental sections, has also caused the decrease of legitimacy and internally horizontal and vertical conflicts of governments of region. Since foreign policy of states, their way of interaction with each other and territorial security measures are all affected by domestic levels, and hence internal inability of states in Middle East has paved the way for the formation of conflicting security complex, great powers intervention and creation of insecurity in the region.

Post-Saddam Hossein Iraq is one of the most important foreign policy areas of the Islamic Republic of Iran. While internal gaps, political competition and security challenges have increased in the new Iraq, the formation of a Kurdish state in the western borders of Iran and disintegration of Iraq, as one of the most likely scenarios for the future of this country, is further reinforced. So, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the disintegration of Iraq affects the national security of Iran? Theoretically, Lenore G. Martin’ s interdisciplinary national security approach have been used to measure this issue. In terms of method, the Casual Method has been applied to understand the relationship between variables. The findings of the study indicate that the faults resulting from the Iraqi disintegration by activating minorities and causing various ethno-religious gaps, the creation of new states in the vicinity of Iran and the strengthening of opposition groups and rival actors have led to the formation of widespread security threats against the territorial integrity, social cohesion and political system of Iran. Therefore, despite the fact that effective policies and practices to support the unity and stability of Iraq has taken by Iran, reducing the threat posed by Iraq experience require greater focus on aspects of the possibility of such a scenario.

From past to now, one of the most important researches part in regional studies has been study of great powers role in Middle East. This article aim is explanation of China s Midlle East policy in a last decade with emphasis on concept of "regional balancing". The main question of the article is why china chooses regional balancing policy in the Middle East? The argument is the china choice rooted in three level of national, regional and global analysis. Findings of the research with descriptive-explanative method shows that some factors in national level such as, China position in transition route of development, principle of respect to countries sovererignty and territorial integrity and islam factor are important. In regional level, the most important variables are: economic importance of Middle East and maintainance of markets, China s necessary to Middle East resources of energy and cooperation with regional partners and finally, in global level some factors like: simultaneously competition and cooperation with United States, belt and road initiative and China s soft power and cultural influence are important.

Iran’ s immediate response to the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal was not a full resumption of its nuclear activities. Instead, Tehran tried to salvage the deal. This behavior is quite different from Iran’ s nuclear policy in the time span from 2005 to 2013 when Iran tried to advance its nuclear program despite the sanctions. In this paper, the question is: why Iran was insisting on its maximum advancement of its nuclear program during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but sought reconciliation under Ruhani and tried to salvage the nuclear deal after the US withdrawal? To answer this question, using the analytical-descriptive method, some cognitive theories are applied. The cognitive view demonstrates that Iran’ s policy makers perception of being in the win domain during Ahmadinejad presidency, led them to consider a nuclear reconciliation a loss that cannot be made for by the received advantages. The change in the Iranian policy makers’ perception about the costs of the nuclear deal and the placement of the country in the loss domain, led to the gradual readiness for an agreement and then salvaging it. In the same vein, the justice seeking attitude of Ahmadinejad on one hand and the unjust quality of the great powers’ proposals on the other hand, resulted in the rejection of such proposals; in contrast, the interactive attitude of Ruhani in addition to the readiness of the great powers to hold a balance in securing Iran’ s interests facilitated his administration bids to reach an agreement and preserve it.

The Central Asian region is of great importance to Iran because of its religious, ethnic, cultural, historical and civilizations shares with I. R. Iran have. the following article seeks to answer the question, "What are the factors affecting the future developments in the Central Asian region and what kind of relationship do they have with I. R. Iran? ” The approach of the present study is “ mixed” and based on purpose; it is an “ applied-developmental” research. The target population consisted of 32 experts and experts in the area. In order to collect the required information for compiling research literature, "library studies" using "catch-up" tools, and "field studies", using "semi-structured interviews" and "closed questionnaires", were used to collect the actual data. . Interview questions and questionnaires were confirmed by experts in both aspect and content validity. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) was calculated 0. 906 using SPSS software, indicating high reliability of the questionnaire. "Shannon entropy method" was used to analyze the quantitative data collected by "descriptive statistics or parameters" and also to rank the importance of questionnaire propositions. Thus, all influential actors in the three groups; local actors (ethnicities, religions, movements and other local actors), regional and international, mentioning the type of relationship each had with I. R. Iran, as well as the extent of its impact on the future of regional developments, are identified and ranked, and finally, strategies to provide grounds for the expansion of presence and influence I. R. Iran has been suggested in this area.

The purpose of this article is to examine the dimensions of containment and deterrence policies in Russia-US relations and analyze their impact on Iran's interests and security. Considering Russia as a revisionist power that challenges its superior position in the international arena, the US is trying to contain Russia with the same nature of the Soviet era, aiming to limit influence, reduce strategic weight, constraint geopolitical power and change its behavior to serve its own interests. On the other side, Russia, which stands for the restoration of its great power status, sees the policy of containment not only as a threat and an obstacle to the realization of this ideal, but also as a challenge to good global governance. Moscow's response to US containment policy is deterrence, which is pursued proportionately to the type of threats differing from military to economic and at various domestic, regional, and international levels. This paper, with a descriptive-analytical approach, focusing on Putin's third and fourth terms, will examine containment and deterrence polices in Russia-US relations in theoretical framework of these concepts and their consequences on Iran. It is argued that although the application of containment and deterrence in new trends in international relations has been problematic due to diversification and simultaneous threats and threatenings, given the continuing competition for power and sensitivity of geopolitical and security matters in Russia-US relations, these two polices will continue with greater complexity. In summary, it is emphasized that containment and deterrence have different consequences for Iran. Russia's resistance to Washington's aggressive policy and its willingness to cooperate with Iran as an anti-hegemonic force is the positive side and being a subject to possible US-Russian reconciliation, for example under strategic stability concept, to avoid the costs of containment and deterrence is the negative effects of these two strategies on Tehran's interests and security.

During the last two decades, the concept of fragile state, has been appeared as one of the most important concepts of international politics. This phenomenon is one of the characteristics of middle east states. These states have elements such as military intervention of other states, violent and hard kind of regime change, legitimacy crisis, environmental problems, dysfunction of economic and legal system and spread of terrorism. Although internal effects of fragile states have been so more under the focus of researchers and analyzers, regional effects of these states especially in environmental field have been rarely under focus. Iraqi state has been evaluated as a fragile and unstable state from 2003 until now. The aim of the present research is to examine the effect of Iraq fragile state on environmental security of Islamic Republic of Iran. The main question of the research is “ what are the effect of Iraq fragile state on environmental security of Iran? ˮ Findings of the research show considering the characters of fragile state, Iraq has an important role in environmental threats such as water deficit crisis, dust haze storms, air pollution, soil erosion caused by desertification and deforestation in neighbor state, Iran, especially in west parts.