The Interaction between Economic Strategy and Foreign Policy in Contemporary Iran

The foreign policy of developing governments is influenced by various factors that the two most important of which are national security and economic development. The related requirements for the two factors may under certain circumstances appear incongruent or even contradictory. This state has been blatantly obvious in economic and foreign policies of contemporary Iran. In this paper، the interaction of strategic role of economic development in Iranian foreign policies has been analyzed over recent century. The assumption behind the paper is that the motivation for modernization and economic development are among the most important factors for Iranian foreign policy flexibility despite the fact that the occupation for independence and national security in foreign policy has led to relatively strong inclination of Iranian policy makers to substitute imports strategically. Iranian Governments have usually employed the import substitution strategy as a bridge between the two occupations of economic development and national security.