The Identity Backgrounds and Obstacles of Cooperation between Iran and Sunni Islamist movements: Case Studueis of Muslims Brotherhood and AK Party

The Islamic Republic of Iran as a state based on political Islam, presented the unification of Muslims as its goal. The nature of this state and the unification goal require cooperation with Islamist groups as prioritized policy. In spite of this fact, the respective cooperation faces challenges in the real scene of international relations. The main question of this research is to understand the grounds and obstacles towards this cooperation. The case studies are Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s AKP. The importance of this research is deepening theory and practice in policy area of relation with Islamist groups. The main question is that what are the identity- oriented grounds and obstacles towards Islamic Republic of Iran’s cooperation with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s AKP? To answer this question constructivism theory has been choose as the theoretical framework of this research and the grounds and obstacles towards the cooperation between the IRI and the two other actors have been studied at agent level focusing on the concept of identity. The data gathering method is secondary study and the data gathered are analyzed based on comparative method. According to findings, the grounds of cooperation of Islamic Republic of Iran with Muslim Brotherhood at agent level based on commons in type and role identity including Islamism, protecting oppressed people and Muslims and countering Mostakbering and foreigners, in the other hand obstacles are the lack of common collective identity. In the case of IRI’s cooperation with AKP, obstacles are more than grounds and inconsistency in the role identities of the two actors – regional superiority for Iran and center state for AKP- and collective identities of the actors – resistance for Iran and Ottomanism for AKP- overcome the consistency in the democracy as a type identity for IRI and corporate identity for AKP.