نشریه پژوهش ملل
پیاپی 33 (شهریور ماه 1397)

During the past half-century the United States’ policy in the Middle East have had some specific goals, the most important of which includes providing stability and security for Israel in the region, supplying sustainable energy from the region, a plan to democratize the countries of the region, pursuing long-term economic goals in the form of a large market and registering and developing the west culture and policy in the Islamic countries. After the attack happened on September 11, 2001 a new phase was begun in United States’ policy in Middle East that included two important aspects. First, attempts to weaken or, even, change government of different countries such as Iraq and Iran, and second, to pursue the creation of a gradual policy for controlled reforms in countries of the government and traditional strategic ally. However, American authoritarianism succeeded in changing the government in Iraq, but failed to weaken or change the government of Iran during the presidency of Bush. The type of America’s confrontation with the process of the reforms in the future governments’ approach, popular movements and available alternatives, Israel's interests and security, and the contradiction between strategic interests and democratic principles were among the most important issues faced by the United States. The main question of the study is that “Has the United States’ foreign policy in Middle East changed before and after the Arab Spring?” And the hypothesis of the research is that before and after the Arab Spring, the United States’ foreign policy, while having some changes, was in line with its predetermined strategic interests in the region.

Since ordinary people pay less attention to the issues, they ultimately play an insignificant role in political campaign; while a small minority (elite), having organizing capability, is able to create a movement. In industrial societies, legal cooperative entities namely parties, syndicates, the press, universities, and legislative councils are the most important elite training centers, whereas, in Iran, due to the type of the structure, such centers haven’t played a major and defining role in intellectual development of political elites. Therefore, elite's political culture has always been Patrimonialism. In this regard, the author has studied the political culture of the ruler elites through a descriptive-analytical way in order to response to the hypothesis of non-cooperative ruler elite in four periods of time and then, based on different time intervals, evaluated four diverse types of discourses on how the political culture of elites influence the function of the society. The results indicate that the political elite's unwillingness to the expansion of the participation and competition in politics, which represents a kind of subordinate political culture, was one of the serious reasons for undeveloped politics and inefficiency of the society.

The Saudi-led coalition's Attack to Yemen killed and wounded thousands of people, many of whom were women and children. Numerous civilian targets, such as hospitals and schools were bombed and destroyed in these attacks, which resulted in famine, malnutrition and severe health problems for the civilian population. Given that the International Criminal Court is competent to deal with genocidal crimes, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression, we seek in this paper to first introduce Yemen and analyze the causes of the crisis in that country, and then to analyze the Saudi-led coalition's Attack to this country in accordance with the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and mention the warnings of international organizations and institutions regarding these crimes, and finally come to an analysis of these acts in general.

Resistance Economy is aimed at minimizing impact of foreign policies on the national economy. The leverage that economically prosperous countries have benefited from is regional infrastructures and mechanisms. ECO potentially is a competent platform to boost regional economic cooperation, if it could recover from deficiencies such as incongruity of national legal systems of its two pivotal member states (Iran and Turkey). Laws and regulations on economic activities, legislation, criminalization, dispute settlement and economic assistance among the judicial systems of the member states not only are not consistent but also contradictory. Turkey and Iran (as the two founder and important member states of the ECO) have to embark on legalizing on joint legal cooperation and resolve heterogeneity of the two legal systems. Following viewing examples on international legal cooperation domains, this paper will discuss the current status and prospect of judicial cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 pronounced an award about the case of South China Sea in which Chinese government was declared the government which failures its commitments under the UN 1982 Convention on Law of the Sea. It was supposed that the award of tribunal could cease the disputes between China and the Philippines about maritime conflicts. The award-which the principal point was that the historical claims of Chinese government were not considered admissible- was pronounced in favor of sovereignty of the Philippines government. However, the Chinese government severely denied proceedings and believed that the PCA was not competent (had no jurisdiction) solving the dispute. Moreover, the mentioned government denied accepting obligations which arose under the award. It is supposed that the situation between those governments goes more complicated.

In the present study we are going to explain the concept of the right to equality and discrimination aspects in Iran's legal system. In many legal systems, due to racial, ethnic, gender, nationality as well as many other factors, some sorts of discrimination are created in the society and affects minority groups. The citizens rights recognized in the constitution of each country are the fundamental rights of them. If the constitution recognizes these rights, then the normal laws must seek to enforce and protect them. One of the aspects of such protection in Iran's normal laws is the criminal protection of fundamental rights against violations by citizens and government officials. However, Iran's criminal lawmaker has not taken an appropriate method in this regard. Beside the fact that, there are still some violations of fundamental rights that do not have criminal guarantees, the status quo has some shortcomings and contradictions. Establishing the equality principle in the society and eliminating discrimination can pave the way for applying other rights or principles. Regarding the common social rights of most societies including the right to education for all or the right to work and so on, the legal equality and non-discrimination have necessitated that all human beings are equal in benefiting their social rights and they should be treated in the same way without any discrimination.

Being located at the border of Europe and Asia, the Caucasus is a high quality region in terms of energy. The huge oil and gas reserves in this region have led to entry of regional and trans-regional countries as well as different companies. One of the most important issues about energy in the South Caucasus is the energy transmission issue. Various plans and projects, including the Nabucco pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, were proposed and done by the United States and the Western powers that in most of the projects, Iran did not enjoy a special status. The main question of the research is that what is the position of Iran in the energy transmission lines in the South Caucasus? The main hypothesis is that due to the presence of regional and trans-national powers, Iran has not been able to have an outstanding place in the energy transmission lines in the South Caucasus (especially in Nabucco, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum). In other words, anti-Iran policies, especially by the United States, are a major obstacle to Iran's participation in such projects. The United State’s support for energy transmission projects with the aim of the political considerations such as isolating Iran as well as restricting all the ways of Russian exports in order to maintain its traditional control and influence on newly independent countries are two of the most important reasons of ignoring Iran from energy transmission projects to South Africa.