Islamic Republic of Iran Economic Diplomacy in the Middle East: A Survey on Challenges and Obstacles

Fundamental change in security concept and its concentration on non-military dimension in addition to globalization and promotion of interdependence between countries have some consequences such as economic importance in foreign policy and its impact on priorities and instruments of foreign policy. In addition, some other factors like livelihood factors as base of legitimate foundations of political systems and regionalism trends have helped to focus on economic diplomacy in the region. This article with assumption of economic diplomacy importance is seek to analysis challenges and obstacles of this diplomacy in the middle east. The question is what challenges are before I.R of Iran s economic diplomacy? As a hypothesis and rely on descriptive- explanative method, this article argues Iran economic diplomacy in the middle east is encounter some multiple challenges in national, regional and global level. Findings of the article shows these challenges in national level are lack of visible definition from the concept, different and invisible models of development, lack of main and single agency, security-military view dominance on foreign policy, securitization milieu of middle east, similar economies not complementary, multilateralism weakness in regional level and finally great powers interventions in the regional and consequences of global economic crisis are main challenges in global level.