Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Volume:9 Issue: 1, Winter-Spring 2018

There has been an almost unprecedented degree of hostility and hostile rhetorical exchanges during the last few years among major regional actors in the Middle East. Many observers are concerned about the formation of an escalating security dilemma in the region with unintended and/or unpredictable consequences. This article seeks to explain the current security dilemma in the region on the basis of the threat perceptions of three major regional actors, i.e., Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey2, and the way in which their attempts for constituting a balance against each other may either lead to more problems in the region or less tensions. It will demonstrate how any act by the actors out of defensive concerns might be interpreted by others as an offensive approach. Yet it is suggested that through dialogue and confidence building measures much of the distrust and uncertainties can be overcome.

The U.S., Iran and South Africa are important countries in the world. However, while the U.S. is regarded as a global power, Iran and South Africa are considered as regional powers. With respect to energy and mineral supplies, Iran and South Africa are important and effective countries in the world. Considering the expansion of Communism threat and rich mineral resources such as huge uranium, metals and diamond mines, South African countries have gained America’s attention during the Cold War and became subject to special American cultural policies. On the other hand, while the U.S. and Iran enjoyed close bilateral ties before the Islamic revolution, this relationship changed dramatically with the advent of the Islamic Revolution, which swept Iran from 1978-1979, and altered virtually every aspect of these long established ties. This article investigates and compares American cultural policies and diplomacy in post-apartheid South Africa on one hand and post-revolutionnary Iran’s polices on the other hand and looks for American Diplomatic tools and practices in these two countries to find out the differences of U.S. public diplomacy.

This paper aims to study the impact of the economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran during the years 1980-2015, by reviewing the sustainability transition of the car-fuel socio-technical system of the country. This paper raises the following questions; what are the impacts of the international sanctions imposed on Iran? which aspects of the regime is more strongly affected by these sanctions? and finally, whether the sanctions have made the Iranian car fuel system more or less carbon-based? This paper concludes that while the impacts of the economic sanctions have had mixed results on the technology selection mechanism, their indirect impacts on the cultural-cognitive institutions of the society has created a new balance leaning towards a pro-change discourse.

Although Saudi Arabia is the largest Arab power, it has been restricted and countered by Iran that is challenging the control of the regional order from U.S.-backed states. The paper argues that there have been several critical flashpoints of rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh, in which, Iran has successfully outmanoeuvred its rival and won these geopolitical contests. Although the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is often viewed in the context of Sunni-Shi’ite divisions, the paper argues that this is secondary when viewed from the Iranian vision that they are engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle against U.S.-supported Saudi Arabia. Rather, the respective regional powers utilize sectarian divisions to further their ambitions of controlling the Middle Eastern regional order, the most significant being Iran’s support for the Lebanese Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah. Despite the billions invested and making pre-emptive moves, such as backing terrorists in Syria since 2011, invading Yemen since 2015, and fomenting diplomatic crises with Qatar and Lebanon in 2017, Riyadh has failed in its policy goals to contain Iran.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are going through one of their worst periods of their relations. They have long been serious competitors for each other in the Middle East, and the rivalry seems to have intensified in the last ten years and has had far-reaching consequences for both countries. These two regional powers both are major oil exporting countries and naturally in any main issues, oil could be account as an important tool to pursue goals in foreign policy. Iran and Saudi Arabia have a long history of differences about oil policies but one of the most severe differences appeared in 2011-2019, along with escalating tensions between the two countries in the region, which heavily shaped oil market trends in this period. So the main question of the article centered about how has the escalating tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2010-2019 affected the oil sector of the two countries? The answer given to this question as a hypothesis is that the escalating tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia has led the officials of the two countries to resort to aggressive use of oil against the rival which have caused serious damages to the oil sector of both countries.

Subsequent to Mena incident in 2015 and the victimization of several thousand citizens of Muslim countries with nearly half of Iranian nationals, diplomatic and political relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia deteriorated. Although the relations between the two countries at both previous eras and prior to the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 is not a new phenomenon, a historical review is indicative of the fact that this divergence was exacerbated in the aftermath of the September 11, and reached its climax with the emergence of some issues such as the US invasion of Iraq and the Arab revolutions in South West Asia and North Africa in 2010. The current article seeks to explain the real nature and underlying causes of the divergence of the relations between the two countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia in the post-September 11. The paper hypothetically considers the substantial ideological difference as the main explanation for all of the soft and hard conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia.