The Relationship between Foreign Policy and Health: A Theoretical Challenge to Iran's Foreign Policy in the Coronavirus Age

The history of the connection between health and foreign policy in the world dates back to more than a century ago; However, the relationship and position of these two concepts with each other in Iran's foreign policy is still unclear. It seems that the main reason for this condition referred to the weakness or the lack of a theoretical framework for this issue in Iranian foreign policy. Based on the above necessity, the main question of the present study is where is the position of health in the mainstream theories of International Relations and what is the relationship between the two concepts of health and foreign policy? The research methodology is descriptive-analytical conducted by library-based data. The results pointed to three approaches in explaining this relationship and position: foreign policy as health, health as foreign policy, and health as one of the foreign policy agendas. It also showed that today the attention to health in foreign policy has gone beyond the previous moral and humanitarian frameworks (liberalism) and has opened its place in the issues of power and security (realism).