نشریه مطالعات بین المللی
سال سیزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 50، Autumn 2016)

The 2016 elections in Iran, both for parliament and the Assembly of Experts, offer essential insights into the possible future direction of the country's foreign policy. Even though the results of elections in Iran have not usually been as desired, Iranian people have always valued the opportunity of voting in order to express their political views. During the 2016 elections, they had the choice of voting for either a radical or a moderate response to the country's wide range of internal and external challenges. Ultimately, Iranians shifted their votes towards the moderate party, which also indicates their satisfaction of the nuclear deal. As a result, almost all of the representatives who opposed the nuclear deal lost their seats in parliament. President Rouhani now has the political capital to push a course of greater socioeconomic reform and liberalization at home and engagement abroad. With a blend of descriptive and analytic approaches, this paper intends to provide a review on Iran’s 2016 elections, as well as to analyze the possible obstacles that might exist in the path of the Rouhani administration for Iran’s future foreign policy.

The recognition as an equally valued subject as a solution for conflicts about material interests and power related subjects is the main point of the Clausewitz theory. In the twenty-first century, due to the effects of globalization, war and violent conflicts are characterized by the hybrid combination of the instrumentality of war and the struggles for a renewed recognition as a result of a formerly denied recognition. It is not our intention to psychoanalyze Clausewitz and the meaning this problem has for his development, but only to stress that he was ready to defend his equality. Relatedly, today, the Arab world is in a state of change and social overthrows are due to increased mobility, progressive urbanization, and a secular intercourse with Islam. People in the Arabic world are still in the adjustment process within the first modernity and at the same time have to deal with the unstoppable globalization. The nature of this study is analytical and descriptive, intending to analyze the hybrid wars, especially in the Arab world, in the twenty-first century through the Clausewitz theory, while focusing on the definitions of ‘recognition’ and ‘violence’.

The quality of political participation of women is one of the main indictors of political and social development, which paves the way for sustainable development as well. One of the most important manifestations of this participation is taking part in voting to elect people’s representatives in various institutions. Women’s votes can be considered a basic factor that can lead to important changes in legislative capacities in order to improve women’s situation in various areas. Representatives, who take charge of decision-making and executive posts through women’s votes, will naturally or under women’s pressure have to be more careful about decisions that pertain to women. However, promoting women’s participation in practice depends on a variety of factors. If the society is to benefit from political participation of women, these factors should be identified and assessed. One of the most important factors is the general course of political developments in the country. This article’s core question is: What factors affect quality of women’s political participation in Iran? Our central argument is that mass political participation of the Iranian women was growing during 2001- 2011 through the strong role that women played in various elections. The method applied in this paper blends descriptive and analytical approaches.

Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, former Iranian Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations (New York), is now the Foreign Minister, and quite a celebrity, inside the country and at the international level. Mr. Ambassador: Conversation with Mohammd Javad Zarif – Former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations is a book written by Mohammad Mehdi Raji, and is a product of more than 40 hours of exchange. Zarif’s detailed and patient replies to the interviewer’s numerous questions, portrays a good picture of the personality, line of thinking, the ever-present smile and even frequent hearty laughs. “Mr. Ambassador” contains a rich litany of substantial material in a number of fields and at several levels. At the most rudimentary level, it lays out the life journey of Javad Zarif, and in deeper levels, it focuses on his multilateralism. Zarif’s objective and candid is extremely educational. For sure he is a go-getter, you may disagree with him, but he is a man to respect and even love; a man for all seasons for Iranian diplomacy in an age of the supremacy of individual-collective human failings and even sheer lunacy. This article reviews the book Mr. Ambassador on a more personal level, and gives deeper insights both on the narrative, and on Javad Zarif’s real life.

The complex and multi-faceted geopolitical environment created in Syria and the Middle East today makes it extremely difficult for the United States and its Western and regional allies to continue its policy of calling for the removal of the Assad regime. Arguably, Assad’s departure from power at this time would prove to be a critical mistake, with the scope of its ramifications largely unknown. In this essay, we will engage first in discussing the lack of a detailed and comprehensive day-after strategy by Western powers to be implemented in Syria, should Assad be removed, and how this could lead to a multitude of complicated problems. We will then analyze Syria’s role as a showground of strategic competition between many regional and world powers, and how Assad’s departure could result in a much more intensified rivalry between and among these powers. We conclude that there are many inevitable trade-offs involved in ending the Syrian civil war, but that for now the growing threat ISIS poses to the world renders defeating the Islamic State a higher priority over advocating a regime change in Syria. Moving forward, the essay examines nonviolent alternatives to the military intervention/strike in Syria.

When single-polar world changes, the integration procedures, which defines the whole process of the regionalization, take special importance. The transition to the multi-polarity world idea in present time became an indisputable fact. The increase of the geopolitical competition, fast developments in the world of new regional economic, social, military, political, and legal spaces are unavoidably issue challenges of existing areas of the regional cooperation. The regional integration has become an inalienable part of the evolution. Actually, taking into account the development of regional integration in the Eurasian territory, there are processes of construction of the Eurasian law. The law plays the most important role in achieving such goals, because law is a regulator of relations both at the national and at the international levels. In this article the authors’ concept of the formation of the Eurasian Law was set out, it was developed based on the analysis of doctrinal approaches to the theoretical and legal foundations, the genesis, and the main features and characteristics of the Eurasian law as an element of the International law. The author examines the theory aspects of Eurasian law and also the material and legal features of Eurasian integration, and proves the formation of the Eurasian legislation and Eurasian law as a science and scholarly discipline.