Journal of Defense Policy
Year:2016 | Volume:23 | Issue:2 (90)|Papers Count:7

This article plans to address the coordinates of Islamic Republic of Iran’s soft power, where in so doing it makes a scientific study of the geopolitics, the generators, means, and resources of Islamic Republic of Iran’s soft power in light of the principles contained in the Constitution. The findings of this research indicate that, firstly, the geopolitics of Islamic Republic of Iran’s soft power is quite recognizable in the regions across the world. Secondly, the soft power is capable of being promoted through means such as media, the power of the revolution in inspiring its culture or exporting itself to other places, as well as its knowledge and political values. Thirdly, based on the principles in the Constitution, institutions such as Wilayat al Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist or Providence of the Jurist), family; the executive branch, and the public are among the main generators of the soft power. Fourthly, the sources of soft power can be observed in cultural - social, political, economic and scientific areas, a few of the extracted parameters of which are as follow: Justice, ethical values, fighting corruption, developing Islamic brotherhood and public cooperation, Islamic criteria, enjoining good and forbidding wrong, cultural independence, guarding the family, cultural unity in the Islamic world, rejecting any kind of oppression and being oppressed, providing the social and political freedoms within law, public assistance in determining their political destiny, formulating the country's foreign policy according to the Islamic rules, public votes, political independence, the political unity in the Islamic world, producing welfare and removing and kind of poverty and deprivation, economic independence, social security, providing the fundamental needs, economic program, employing sciences and techniques and training skilled individuals as required for development and progress in the country, defending the rights of all Muslims, raising the levels of public awareness, education, facilitating and generalizing high education, promoting the spirit of research and innovation in all scientific, technical, cultural and Islamic fields though establishing research centers and encouraging researchers and self-sufficiency in sciences and techniques. Focusing on the above-said parameters and enabling the nation can make for the integrity of the internal structure of the national system as well as producing a total stability.

Today, the influence of internet-based social networks on the lives of human beings has affected many aspects of human life. In addition to producing opportunities which had not been existing before, these networks have produced many threats and problems against their users; in a way that those threats are imposed against the users through other users of these networks on the one hand, and by the institutions and states that are dependent on the hostile states. It follows that the extensiveness of the use made of the social networks based on the virtual space should not make us ignore to address the potential threats posed in these networks. So, the present article has come to identify and prioritize such threats in the area of national security. Using AHP technique, the present article prioritizes the various kinds of threats imposed on users by the states and institutions dependent on the hostile states and the criteria that are used to assess them by studying the literature and the backgrounds of the research and identifying those threats. After this stage, those threats are prioritized by using AHP analysis model with a view to the criteria concerned. The results showed that the significance of the criteria that are used to choose the threats can be expressed in the form of the complexity of the threats (rate One), the speed at which the threats become prevalent (rate 2), the duration of the threats (rate 3), and extent and scope of the threats (rate 4). The threats in order of significance are as follow: street riots, regional and racial differences; cultural terror; rumors; and auditing the information in the society. Finally, suggestions are presented for the policy-makers in the fields of information technology and communications in the country.

Basically, the arms race is as long as human history, and that is considered one of the most important phenomenon affecting the pattern of relationships between the units that form the international system; and it is for this reason, today, that it is considered as one of the most important theoretical and practical issues of international and regional studies. In this context, the regional orders in general, and regional order of the Middle East in particular, are faced with such an issue; so this article wants to examine the basic questions like “what variables have caused the formation of the arms race in Middle East?” and “how can the relationship between two variables (arms race and strategic stability) be defined in this region? ”In this article, it is believed that inefficiency of the Middle East strategic environment is the main cause of arms race and the strategic stability is a prerequisite for arms control regime in this region. Due to the lack of strategic instability in the Middle East, as well as the fact that no comprehensive security regime has been developed, arms race is considered as a reality in the regional order. To address this issue, this present article draws on a case study giving priority to theory. First, it develops a theoretical model, and then analyzes the arms race in the Middle East accordingly.

Military strategy is a set of techniques, arts and policies adopted by every country in employing armed forces to achieve national and political objectives. The difference between the military strategy adopted by each country lies in their strategic objectives which are distinguished by the worldview, ideological and ethical etc. differences that exist in statesmen. Having been fundamental and being of qualitative nature, the present article is a query-based exploration into Nahj-Al-Balagha to find the fundamental parameters of military strategy in it. This research matters because military strategy is of specific importance as a fundamental principle in military management. By the same token, such research regarding such Islamic source has been considered necessary, and the vacuum of research is particularly clear in this area. The findings of the research, which have been achieved using fundamental theory and library collection, indicate that parameters like denouncing war and approving peace, developing the educated (elitism) and producing security, focusing on unity and idealism, employing the enemy's force against the enemy himself (the reversed strategy) and …are derived from the Nahjal-Balaghe, which supports the main hypothesis in this research that the book itself contains parameters in the area of military strategy., one whose main approach is defensive, but has the necessary power of flexibility and rejection in combat and non-combat conditions as well as the power of responding against any threat and invasion.

Terrorism is a complex phenomenon, which is a dense volume of deadly violence whose devastating political, social, economic and security implications have swept many countries. In addition to its complex nature, terrorism has diverse species, taking on a form each time according to terrorists' objectives and the conditions governing the target community, from mass destruction to hostage taking, through hijacking, bombing, etc. That terrorism has managed to take the place of some known political phenomena like revolution, war, coup d'état and insurgence proves a notable issue. After giving definitions of terror and terrorism and rethinking the explanatory approaches through an integrated approach, this article addresses ISIS's terrorist actions, also trying to unveil the role and importance of these approaches in explaining terrorism. The findings of this research indicate that ISIS is planning to disrupt the balance of power and restore the Islamic Caliphate by riding on the wave of the sectarian-ideological gaps in Iraq, the chaotic conditions in Syria and the warlike interventions on the part of a few of the region's states, the United States, and its allies, and insisting on their Salafi-Takfiri positions. This is an issue to which the approaches in the present research (natural, cultural, economic, religious, political, and logical-rational approaches) are committed to explain.

The non-proliferation and arms control efforts can be regarded as a means to implement America's national security strategy. From this perspective, the effectiveness of such mechanisms should be viewed in the light of the increased transparency, providing the means for controlling the dual-use technologies and articles, and restricting any effort designed to develop and proliferate the weapons of mass destruction. Minding the question of "to what extent has the nonproliferation policy risen to positions of importance and status, in US pro-cold war administrations? ", the present research plans to put to test the hypothesis that "the non-proliferation policy has undergone a particular process of evolutionary continuity in America's security behavior in the post-cold war era, where the United States has sought to influence the general trends governing the process of controlling exports and the international non-proliferation regimes in order to operationalize its national security strategy. The present article is causal descriptive, and its required information has been gathered through library sources and internet searching in reliable bases, and then analyzed.

The issue of utilizing the Shale gas reserves is a strategic one in the area of energy. The strategic implication for this issue as a “game changer” for the Islamic Republic of Iran is that those countries that can be potential markets for Iran’s natural gas and LNG (India and China) have become interested in the issue of Shale gas, and try, followed by America, to commercialize this technology. The hypothesis in this research is that the commercialization of the Shale gas in the IRI traditional markets will challenge the country’s national security in a long-term period of time, which will be tested by using the theoretical model of the multi-dimensional securitization in the Copenhagen School and employing the strategic analysis used in this analysis. The findings of this research show that the commercialization trends of the Shale gas can have the following effects upon the security of the Islamic Republic of Iran: A) security/political effects: through decreasing the strategic value of the IRI energy sources for those traditional consumers of energy in the country (eliminating dependence on Iran’s oil on the part of countries like China and India), facilitating the project of imposing sanctions and exercising pressure, undermining the diplomacy of energy for those countries that export natural gas including the Islamic Republic of Iran, B) economic/technical effects: through helping reducing prices as well as reducing the demands for IRI export energy which will decrease the IRI revenues in energy export, The intact projects LNG that have become uneconomical due to the change in the current export routes, and reducing the revenues by exporting energy.