Geopolitics of Energy and Its Effect on Iran's Rentier Economy in order to Indicate a National Strategy

Experts in political economy have called the 21st century as the century of Geo-economics on the basis of current trends in international political economies as they believe that one of the most important world's challenges in this century is the competition for energy resources especially Oil and Gas. The great portion of Gulf States' income comes from exporting Raw Oil and their single-product economy depends strongly on oil revenue. In these countries including Iran, the economy depends on Oil and the oil revenue enters the economy directly through budget by the government which means that oil price decrease affects vigorously their economy. In this research, the effects of rent and rentier government were explored considering Oil as the principal cause of rentier governments by using analytical method, statistics, charts and Delphi method. Consequently, government's opinions and rentier economy was used to explain and justify lack of political and economic development in countries that are dependent on oil revenue. It is argued that depending on oil revenue has a negative effect on government, the relations between society and government and finally on country's economy. It increases rent and consumerism in society and turns the government into a rent distributor. According to Kemp, Iran not only has the second position of fossil energy resources, but also locates in world's strategic Hartland center, but it could not succeed in internal and external fund raising and achieving up-to-date scientific technologies used for energy extraction (Oil and Gas) because of its rentier economy caused by sanctions and their internal and external effects and oil industry characteristics which needs huge investments. In this research, different aspects and consequences of rentier government was indicated and some solutions to depart from it was shown.