Iran's Security Strategy towards US Geopolitical Movements in the Middle East (2001-2015)

The analysis and examination of security strategies of different states is an important analytical task in political science and international relations and many theories have been put forward to dealing with this concern. Undoubtedly, the theory of Kenneth waltz and its modification by scholars such as birth Hansen, Peter Toft and Anders Wiwel are very important analytical tools for this matter. In this paper, authors are going to examine Iran's different security strategies towards Unites State’s geopolitic advances in the Middle East since 2001by applying the theory of Hansen and his collegues.The findings of the paper demonstrate that Iran adopted the combination of soft balancing and soft bandwagoning in the aftermath of the United States attack to Afghanistan, while in Iraq’s crisis and Syria developments soft balancing and hard balancing were, respectively adopted by the Islamic government of Iran. Moreover, the relative security and relative ideology are the independent factors which determine and explain the reasons behind the adoption of these strategies.