نشریه سیاست دفاعی
پیاپی 101 (زمستان 1396)

NATO is the longest political and military organization in the contemporary history, which has redefined its missions in several stages since 1949 up to now. Having proposed a new concept for security in the second decade of the 21st century, this organization sought to protect the security of the Atlantic territory outside the region, and designed, and is now running, a number of mechanisms to legitimize this action. Dynamic attendance in various geopolitical regions contain NATO’s most significant strategy. Due to this, it is regarded as the sixteenth neighbor of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has physical presence all over the geopolitical regions of the country. In this regard, the identification of NATO strategies for expanding its geopolitical presence by focusing on the western borders of Iran is the main concentration of this study, which is trying to answer the essential question of how NATO is making an attempt to expand its territory in the geopolitical regions to the west of Iran. Following a descriptive-analytical method and using the library, internet and media data collection methods, the research mainly hypothesizes that NATO is trying to maintain and expand its sovereignty by the principles ​​of liberal democracy and the free market as the driving force of the contemporary world system. Making use of strategies of expanding the formal and informal political frontiers, humanitarian missions, defense and security cooperation, and extending its administrative and organizational offices, NATO is trying to extend its territories to the geopolitical regions of Turkey and Arabian regions to the near-western area, and extending its presence in the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean, as well as the North Africa in the far-western regions of Iran.

Some governments try to achieve their goals by forming insecurity and instability in the ethnic relations in the opposing country. Iran is one of the most diverse countries in the region in terms of ethnic variety. In spite of its ethnic variety, the national identity and integrity in Iran, though threatened by the interventionist rivals and enemy states, are quite desirable compared to other countries in the region. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia tries to make use of some internal flaws of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding ethnicity in order to act in the field of regional balance as part of the process of internal control of Iran. It is apparent that Iran has to consider a set of strategies to increase its strengths and reduce its weaknesses in order to exploit environmental opportunities, and to discard threats. Removing some of the internal deficiencies, including the relative deprivation of ethnic regions, can be the most important measure for changing Iran's confrontation with Saudi Arabia for the benefit of Iran in the long run. Making use of library and Internet resources along with the use of SWOT analysis method, this research aims at understanding a set of strategies in this regard. According to this analysis, Iran is facing an internal environment with eight strong points and six weaknesses, and an external environment with six opportunities and nine threats. Finally, 38 strategies were derived from coinciding two by two of the strengths and weaknesses with opportunities and threats.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a regional and global effective power, is in need of reinforcing its role through interaction with states and creation of new alliances at the state level for deepening and extending its influence in the region. Iran’s active attendance in regional affairs, from the position of the heart of world of Islam, while consolidating its security and economic political roles in the region, will also increase its strategic significance in the international system. Diplomacy is especially important in this process and can manage parts of the functional deficiencies in foreign policy trends in other areas. This descriptive-analytical research employs library-based documentation for data collection. Following this approach, the research focuses on the processes involved in deepening of the Islamic Revolution from the present situation to a desired one through analyzing the strategic challenges and shortcomings of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the field of foreign policy. The most significant result of the research concerns the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on the components of national power, including the enjoyment of a national and powerful government, the use of geopolitical status and the presence of powerful ideology, can play a vital role in regional affairs.

Among the movements inspired and motivated by the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Ansarollah of Yemen is an outstanding one. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the familiarity of Martyr Hussein al-Houthi, the leader of the movement, with Imam Khomeini and his thoughts, succeeded in following his way. Inspired by his ideas, Houthi established the resistance unit in Yemen, and due to people’s awakening, he extended Islamic thought in Yemen. This paper is mainly intended to identify the role of the Ansarollah movement in the regional deepening of the Islamic Republic of Iran based on ‘historical bend’ and the ‘power geometry’ theories. Hence, employing the descriptive-analytical method, this research is trying to answer a fundamental question regarding the role of Ansarollah in regional deepening. Answering this question, the research came to the conclusion  that the Ansarollah movement has been able to influence the Islamic Republic of Iran's deepening by inspiring components of the Islamic Revolution discourse such as Islamism, pacifism, independence and the struggle against arrogance, totalitarianism and domination. In response to this, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has revolutionarily, spiritually, and politically supported this movement, and has changed the power geometry in the region in its favor. Definitely, the Islamic world focusing on the Islamic Revolution has contributed decisively in this new power geometry. The role and depth of the Islamic Republic of Iran has extended in different regions day by day, and each member of the linked communities and the resistance axis, including the Ansarollah movement of Yemen, play effective role in helping this deepening.

Conflicts begin with a difference of viewpoints of two individual perceptions or between two countries. When it intensifies and expands more, it leads to violence among the parties involved. This event has always occurred for various reasons. Various theories have been presented during the history of mankind in relation to the roots of the conflicts. Four outstanding groups of theories contain these theories including theories of political sciences, sociology, international relations, and geographical and geopolitical theories. They are categorized and studied based on four eras of before Christ to fourteenth century, from the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, the twentieth century, and since the beginning of the 21st century. This is a fundamental research which follows a descriptive-analytical method utilizing library resources for the evaluation of 22 important theories regarding the origins of the conflicts in four groups of political sciences, sociology, international relations, and geographic and geopolitical theories. The main question focuses on how the transformation of theories of identifying the roots of conflicts, with emphasis on its negative impact on security in the history of science and in related disciplines have been. The results indicated that the cause or causes of conflicts have coincided with various political, social, cultural, technological, geopolitical, and other changes in historical eras. Micro and single-factor approach to the roots of the conflicts by the theories presented in this field have developed to multi-factor approach, and sciences have presented various attitude in this regard. Given the nature of the conflicts, which involve insecurity, identifying the theories relating to this phenomenon and familiarity with their origins, will be facilitating, contributing, and will arise as an inevitable practice for designing defense and security strategies for countries like as Iran.

The Islamic Revolution and the rise of political Islam triggered alarms for the United States and the global arrogant system. The collapse of the US dependent regime, the anti-imperialist slogans of the Iran revolutionary governments, the threat of the development of the Islamic revolutionary concept in other countries in the West Asian region, and seeking Islamism in the area, brought about serious concerns for America. This research is aimed at finding out and explaining the American methods of setting up, supporting and directing terrorism in the West Asia and providing strategic suggestions for confrontation. The main question regards the America methods for the formation of terrorism in the West Asia, and that how it can be coped with. This is a mixed research, quantitative and qualitative, descriptive-analytical and survey method, whose data is collected by library and field methods using questionnaires and interviews. The results indicated that America, pursuing its goals, is enforcing Iran phobia, Islamophobia (Shi'a phobia) and triggering ethnic differences in Islamic countries,