Major Orientations in Foreign Policy of Rentier States in Iran

Rent and “Rentier States” are interesting topics in different fields of the social sciences. In political and International relations theories a “Rentier State” refers to a government that gets all or most of its income from foreign sources, selling natural resources and foreign aids. In this paper our main assumption is that such governments as a special domestic politics are likely to have a special type of foreign policy. Furthermore, Iran has been chosen as an example of a rentier state by selling oil as the most important commodity since 1978.
The main question of this paper is “How revenues from oil selling has affected the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran?”. The possible answer is “Rentier income from oil is the major factor of internationalism and Idealism in Iran's foreign policy and distanced this country from isolationism, economism and realism.
In conclusion, by examining data from 1978 to 2013 the results show that along with rising oil revenues, the governments tend to internationalism and realism in their foreign policy orientations and depending on the character of Cabinet leaders in each period, gain international prestige by economic and cultural tools.