Investigating the Future of NATO Presence in the Middle East and the Surrounding Environment of Iran and Its Impact on the National Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran

NATO is one of the international organizations for collective and military security. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO lost its existential philosophy, but international crises including the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo crisis and… led it in 1997 to formally announce its goal of world peace and security. The 2001 wars in Afghanistan and the 2003 wars in Iraq made NATO a neighbor of Iran in addition to Turkey, and NATO began to cooperate extensively with Iran's other neighbors. Now, the main question of the research is "Given the NATO’S policy of expanding to the east, what are the types of predictable behavioral scenarios of this presence in the environment of Iran for the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran?" The research method is analytical and scenario writing methods and the information has been collected in the form of documents. The overall result also shows that, given the deepening NATO presence in the periphery of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the fact that the United States is leading NATO, it has hostile relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Predictable scenarios of NATO’S behavior are a range of high-risk, low-risk, and cooperative scenarios, and the extent to which these scenarios pose threats and opportunities to Iran's national security depends on the strategies that Iran's foreign policy adopts. That is to say, threatening or de-escalating behavior, in addition to the extent in which Iran is able to strengthen its various powers, is influential in NATO's future treatment of Iran.