Discourse Change in Foreign Policy of Islamic Republic of Iran: A Comparative Study of Foreign Policy in AhmadiNejad and Rohani's Administration

Since the Islamic Revolution, Islamic Republic of Iran has encountered many ups and downs in its foreign policy. From the interim government until the eleventh government, this country has witnessed different viewpoints concerning its foreign policy even in a way that many experts enumerated different discourses and approaches toward foreign policy. In this paper, we examine Iran's foreign policy on the question of how was Islamic Republic of Iran's foreign policy in different periods toward the different dominant discourses. Therefore, based on the available evidence and the statements and actions of the authorities in the constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran on the one hand and by borrowing from Laclau and Mouffe's discourses on the other hand it is assumed that this system, with dominant discourse around the central principle of Velayat Faqih in foreign policy, has had unique view and approaches presented in different periods and it was just the new articulation of the dominant discourse, not different discourses. To examine this question and hypothesis, this study attempts to investigate Ahmadinejad and Rohani's administration foreign policy toward the course of the nuclear negotiations.