نشریه مطالعات راهبردی جهان اسلام
سال یازدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 44، زمستان 1389)

Positions and views of Salafi groups constantly have been exposed to changing due to time and space conditions or political-social requirements change, and sometimes these changes caused serious conflicts among members of Salafi groups in Sunni world. Salafi movement as one of the known and influential intellectual movements in the Islam world during the recent century has been a stimulus for many political and social movements in Islamic countries. Meanwhile, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement can be considered as the biggest and most influential movement of the last century which despite the risings and fallings has stabilized its position as
the Islamic and pragmatic movement. Alongside Muslim Brotherhood movement, younger movements have been formed the Muslim community which even though their main origin was Ekhvan community, dramatic differences emerged between their political beliefs and Muslim Brotherhood, which clearly has been effective in their way of political and social activities. The present paper examines the principles, pillars and dimensions of similarities and differences of Muslim Brotherhood’s political thought in Egypt and Jihadi groups in issues such as their attitude toward the Islamic government, overall interpretations of Jihad and Takfir, way of behaving with secular governments in Islamic societies, way of treating with foreigners and infidels, and finally way of dealing with other Muslims.

The present paper examines recent developments in Tunisia and its regional consequences. Developments in December 2010 and January 2011 in Tunisia which finally led to Ben Ali escaping from the country after 23 years of governance had broad regional consequences in addition to significant internal changes. Its most important outcome has been providing a model for the movements of the people which led to other Arab nations’ imitation including Egypt and Libya. In this paper, the fields and reasons of Tunisian developments will be examined and then lessons of these developments for the entire region are explained. Based on these lessons, Tunisia’s domestic and regional consequences are considered. This paper does not include details of broad consequences of Tunisia developments, but based on aforementioned lessons, examines future possibilities to provide an approximate framework for future developments.

Due to Afghan government’s inefficiency in establishing full security, the necessary political, military and security fields for long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan have been created. This presence will be in the form of bilateral strategic alliance between United States and Afghanistan. As a result of this treaty, U.S. presence in Afghanistan is permanent and conditions of its comprehensive dominance on Afghan’s military, political and economic areas are created. According to the draft of this strategic treaty, management and command of military operations in Afghanistan practically would be with the United States and Afghanistan would be under US control. This strategic treaty is a threat for more influential international and regional powers in Afghanistan and has harmful consequences for Iran’s security and national interests. Considering the importance of this treaty for the political future of the region, the present paper examines it.

This paper examines impacts of close relations between Iran and Turkey on the Israeli political-security strategies in Middle East. The main argument of the author is that Iran and Turkey as the two regional actors have different roles and degrees of influence, but are complement of each other, and after the September 11 events their levels of power and influence in the Middle East have increased. The closeness of these two actors creates a powerful political-security and economic bloc in the Middle East, which challenges political-security strategies in the region. At the present time, Middle East witnesses a kind of ideological and strategic vacuum due to US inability to control the regional crisis. In this context, regional coalition between Iran and Turkey is rapidly replacing this vacuum. Since promoting and closeness of Turkey and Iran relations challenge Israel's political-security and ideological status in the Middle East, this regime will use all of its power to create a gap in this coalition.

Joining to European Union has been one of the most important Bosnia and Herzegovina's foreign policy priorities in recent years. This demand is followed by Bosnian authorities, while European Union’s leaders insist on doing most immediate reforms in this country. Examining the reasons of European Union’s attention to Bosnia and Herzegovina and its officials’ aims to join EU along with its challenges and consequences are the main goals of the present research.

Those strategic geopolitical areas which have a determining role in international political-security trends mainly become multi-faceted field of international actors. Currently, linkage of the geographical and cultural elements with the phenomena of political extremism and violence in some regions of Pakistan has made the events of this area attractive and challenging for United States and NATO.
The present paper tries to do a kind of analysis and review on the nature of political, security and military behavior of United States and Britain in Pakistan. Undoubtedly, each of these two countries have had extensive backgrounds, experiences and influences in South Asia that if we believe in "Process-based" in international developments, it can be said the current political-security projects of United States and Britain in this area have roots in their experience. Nevertheless, the reality is that United States has become the real inheritor of British colonialism worldwide, but despite transferring the conditions of role-playing, we should wait to see to what extent policies and strategies have changed.

With promoting the importance of cultural activities and prominency of cultural role in foreign policy and theories of international politics and also in function of diplomatic agencies of governments, today discussions such as soft power and cultural diplomacy as the basis and structure of short-term and long-term planning for nations have been taken into consideration. This research examines infrastructures of Islamic republic of Iran's soft power and its fields of cultural diplomacy in Egypt. After preliminary studies about the history of Shiites presence in Egypt, Shia culture in this country is examined. Then several information are provided about groups of Shias in Egypt, Shiite presence in contemporary Egypt, current status of Shiites in Egypt, Egyptian figures in line with Shiism and Shia organizations in this country. In theoretical framework of this paper, the concept of soft power and the main sources of its supply are defined and described and then measures of soft-based cultural diplomacy (based on soft power) are introduced. The main questions are about the foundations of cultural relations between Egypt and Iran, and in what way Islamic Republic of Iran can create a permanent relation in region by relying on the stable and strong social-cultural foundations. Hypothesis of this paper is that "creating a strong and stable relationship between Iran and Egypt depends on Iran’s attempt to develop a comprehensive cultural diplomacy to identify and influence Egypt's social-cultural fields. And in the last part of this paper, the necessities and challenges of Iran’s foreign policy in Egypt are considered.