Engaging and contrasting "political discourses" and "national strategies" in Iranian foreign policy

Foreign policy as the most important manifestation of the international behavior of governments has always been the domain of interaction between theory and practice. In the meantime, each political discourse that seeks power, based on its particular worldview on the prevailing order at the regional and global level, adopts different and sometimes conflicting attitudes in the context of national strategies in foreign policy. The main question of this article is how has Iranian foreign policy been shaped by the "political discourse" and "national strategies" of the government of Sayyid Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What have been the consequences of the national roles and the grand strategies of these two discourses on Iranian foreign policy? To answer the above question, the author attempts to examine the hypothesis that different "macroeconomic strategies" of Iranian presidents have led to the implementation of different and sometimes conflicting foreign policies, using "role theory" and descriptive analysis tools. The findings show that in the field of Iranian foreign policy, there is a cross-talk between the strategies of various discourses, and the opposition of these strategies has led to the inappropriate use of "foreign policy" tools to achieve national goals.