Layered Analysis of Nature of Iran’s Foreign Policy Challenges in the Middle East New Order (2010-2020)

The political and social developments in the past decades in the Middle East developments have created considerable challenges for Iran's foreign policy developments have created considerable challenges for Iran’s foreign policy. This paper intends to find an appropriate answer to the following main question: “What has been the nature of Iran’s foreign policy challenges during the past decade due to the emergence of a new order in the Middle East?” This study’s approach is based on the tradition of critical-intellectual causal layered analysis (CLA) of Sohail Inayatullah and its methodology is synthetic, i.e. we have used meta-analysis method (content analysis) and deductive approach for clarification of causes of challenges in various layers. The findings of this research indicate that in the Middle East new order, the challenges in Iran’s foreign policy are of multi-construct and multilayer nature and each layer consists a wide spectrum of key factors and components. As such, in the topmost layer, change in patterns of cooperation and regional conflict, security issues, conflict of interest between major players, particularly the United States and Iran plus a bunch of other issues have their roots in the country’s internal system’s layer that plays a key role in formation of the said challenges. At the discursive level, the conflict between combatant political Islam discourse and normalization discourse, and, at mythical level such components as international peace, chaos creation, and technological threat play a crucial role in creation of challenges. Such multilayered insight into the political phenomenon can prepare the grounds for creation of a strategic and systematic thought in the country’s foreign policy acts.