Barack Obama's image of Iran based on image theory in international relations

The main purpose of this study is to design a new method for image recognition in international relations. According to image theory, images are said to play an important role in decision-making and policy-making; It is believed that leaders make decisions not on the basis of "reality" but on the basis of their "image of reality". In this regard, the discovery of the subject-identifier image of the known object can be used to explain and even predict the decisions made by the subject-identifier. In this regard, this study has tried in an innovative way to count the image of Barack Obama as President of the United States of Iran from Iran. So the main question is what is President Barack Obama's image of Iran and what are its characteristics? The results of this study show that Barack Obama's image of Iran is similar to the stereotypical image of "relative enemy". This result was obtained by examining the three dimensions of Iran's position, capability, and political values ​​from Obama's point of view, which include threatening, relative power, and different political values, respectively.