The Impact of Structure and Agent on Iran's Foreign Policy during the Second Pahlavi Era

The article seeks to examine the relationship between the agent and the international structure in the foreign policy of the second Pahlavi. This article tries to study, analyze and scrutinize on the effect of structure and agent as two intertwined concepts in the literature of structuralism and constructivism on the strategy of the second Pahlavi foreign policy and seeks to answer the question that How can be explained the effect of structure and agent on Iran's foreign policy during the second Pahlavi era? The hypothesis of the article is that during second Pahlavi the agent has been mostly influenced by the structure of the international system because Mohammad Reza Shah in his foreign policy strategy due to the lack of political legitimacy and lack of popular base tried to seek advantageous relations with one of superpowers in the bipolar international structure. In this article, through a descriptive-analytical method, we analyze the fluctuations and cycles of the second Pahlavi foreign policy strategy according to the relationship between the agent and the structure. The findings of this article indicate that maintaining close relations with the West has been the feature of Mohammad Reza Shah's foreign policy that can be examined in different periods. Extensive relations with the United States in the economic, political, military, and cultural fields have been the manifestations of Second Pahlavi's closeness to one of the power poles in the international structure. Although several periods can be distinguished during second Pahlavi foreign policy, we can say that relations between the structure and the agent have not witnessed some challenges during the Pahlavi era.