فصلنامه آفاق امنیت
پیاپی 50 (بهار 1400)

Ways of ensuring security and confronting environmental threats and dangers involves top priorities of government’s decision-making and policymaking. In the meantime, due to the upgrading of soft threats, it is necessary to consider various dimensions of soft power, along with hard power, in pursuing defense and security policies. Countries which make good use of their soft power capacities in their defense policies achieve significant successes in their defense and security without suffering from excessive military costs. Hence, this study is intended to make an attempt to design a model for improving the capacity of soft power in the defense policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. To do this, the data was collected by survey method (interviews), and qualitative data analysis (grand theory method) was used for data analysis. The statistical population of this study consists of 22 professors, experts, and researchers in the field of this research selected by chain sampling method. The results indicated that the enhancement of soft power capacities in Iranian defense policy can bring about both positive and successful effects and implications in the formulation and implementation of defense policies. It can also result in positive outcomes at national and international levels for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As an inevitable phenomenon, terrorism has directly and indirectly engaged the formal and informal actors of the international system, and has gradually expanded the geographical scope of terrorist acts. This research is intended to assess the capability of the theories of international politics to respond to the conceptual transformation of terrorism, and to try to provide an answer to this question: “What are the most important features of the theoretical transformation of classical terrorism to modern terrorism?” With this in mind, due to the fact that theories in the field of international politics have not been able to analyze modern terrorism well, we tried to test the hypothesis that, there is a theoretical rupture in the concept of modern terrorism compared to the classical type following the process of globalization and change in the system International on the basis of systemic and multilevel views. Accordingly, the most important components of the theoretical transformation and of classical terrorism compared to modern terrorism are: increase of threats, generalization and expansion, change in the nature and function, importance of organizational, networking and cyber terrorism, geographical spread of international terrorism and change in activists' reaction to international terrorism. This is a theoretical research following explanatory method whose data are collected on the basis of library and internet resources.

Money laundering has brough about an essential challenge in the interaction between Iran and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).  The challenge in the interaction with the FATF has involved an issue in Iran's foreign policy for many years due to the importance of money laundering in economy. Actually, an essential point in this interaction relates to the system of production, keeping, and exchange of information in the Financial Action Task Force in order to identify what information, how, and by whom, and with what features about money exchange should be produced, maintained and exchanged. This has covered a long-term discussion and can always be considered in various political and economic situations. Indeed, considering Islamic principles through content analysis method with jurisprudential Ijtihad in relation to the issue of information, and having recognized the structure of production and information exchange of the Financial Action Task Force, this research tries to identify and design the Iranian-Islamic model of production and keeping information on money laundering. This is a completely innovative research with no history.

Employing sanctions has increased now, and has become a dominant US policy in containment and confrontation with independent countries. Along with imposing the unilateral US sanctions, the activities and measures of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in the international system have increased. Although the simultaneousness procedures of these two institutions are significantly obvious, the functional relationship between them and their effects on the countries under sanctions are not known and has not been considered by researchers sufficiently. What are the possible consequences and benefits of joining FATF for Iran, the most significant target of the US sanctions? This is an essential question requiring an answer by the country's officials while adopting how to make a deal. This descriptive-analytical research is intended to review the relevant documents to answer this question. The results revealed that FATF, although appearing as an international entity, is under US influence, and its policies make sanctions more effective in four ways. The group's action plan regarding Iran is incorrect in six respects. It and justifies and reinforces US sanctions in two ways: 1) Joining to the conventions restricts Iran's activities in circumventing sanctions and supporting the Axis of Resistance, and the violation of these conventions leads to new regime of sanctions under the UN Security Council. 2) The banks and legal entities are required to impose sanctions and cut ties with sanctioned individuals inside Iran, and a type of self-sanctioning approach follows revolutionary institutions within the country. Therefore, joining FATF does help ease the load of sanctions; rather, it leads to self-sanctions against defense institutions and the support of national security, and reinforces the effectiveness of US primary and secondary sanctions. Consequently, the ratification and full implementation of the FATF is a unilateral, harmful and useless commitment, which only helps the global consensus confront the Islamic Republic financially and economically mush easily.

Over the past decades, the relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have been one of the most complex, and concurrently, the most sensitive, relationship between the two countries in the international system. The pattern of behavior towards each other has been based on conflict and antagonism. However, it was supposed that the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement could be referred to as a model for peaceful settlement of other disputes between the US and Iran. Yet, contrary to expectations of some analysts, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the agreement, indicating that its pattern of conflict with Iran would continue, and that no change in its behavior had taken place. Accordingly, on the basis of Neo-Gramscian Theory, this descriptive-analytical method using online and library resources, tries to answer the question of how US policies towards the Islamic Republic of Iran can be explained. A hypothesis is put forward in response to the question emphasizing that US policies toward the Islamic Republic of Iran based on the theory of Neo-Gramscian theory, includes the theorization against Iran aiming at delegitimization, coercive diplomacy, and the justification of putting in pressure on Iran though international institutions.

Holding of a referendum on the independence of the Iraqi State of Kurdistan in 2017 provoked a wave of regional and trans-regional reactions. Regional reactions, obviously, were from the governments of Iran, Turkey and Syria. The most important trans-regional reactions including Russia and Western countries. This descriptive-analytical research aims at assessing Russia’s foreign policy strategy as a trans-regional country, as well as collecting relevant data from articles and books. The main question of the research involves Russia's foreign policy strategy towards the independence referendum in the state of Kurdistan of Iraq. Based on the cost-benefit equation and the instrumental-tactical approach, the research hypothesizes that although Moscow did not take a clear position during the referendum on the independence of the Iraqi Kurdish state, Russia opposed the issue in practice. Th the main concern of Russia for opposing the referendum regarded short-term, medium-term and long-term concerns. Alliances and cooperation with Iran and Turkey, and strengthening the Iraqi central government, included the reasons why Russia consulted the Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region to postpone the referendum. Other concerns regarded the weakening of national sovereignty, development of extremists, jeopardizing Russia's stabilizing role in the region, and further US interventions in the region, creating security problems on Iran's borders as Moscow's most important ally, and abolishing any separatist activity both inside and outside the borders.

Nation-state establishment is a process wherein a country makes an attempt to gain and maintain its autonomy, sovereignty, and independence through the development of its power and institutional capacity. Such a goal can be achieved by gaining territorial saturation, national solidarity and political stability. This process has not reached a successful condition in most West Asian countries, and the governments and for some reasons, the nations do not match properly. An essential reason for these cases relates to the improper creation of these countries and their emergence from Post-World War I treaties, resulting in so many problems and challenges for these countries. The question arising here relates to the problems and challenges that nation-state building process has caused in West Asian countries. The hypothesis of this research involves the fact that various internal and external challenges such as ethnic, religious and racial variations, lack of a stable structure and solidarity of national identity, lack of democratic structures and having no resolution for territorial disputes with neighboring countries, and foreign intervention in the affaires of these countries have caused these problems. Moreover, no inclusive plan and model has been presented to accomplish the process of state-nation building and solving the problems and crises in the region. This research is aimed at providing a general analytical model for explaining the process and the challenges facing the nation-state building process in the region. This is a descriptive-explanatory research whose data are collected by reviewing the documents through library technique.

The international legal system is a set of norms, rituals, and legal regimes that facilitate interaction among the components of the institute and bring them together in an integrated arrangement. As much as we are involved in a general system of international law, it will be possible to have several subsystems in this systematic domain. This research is aimed at answering the question of what the position of international security regimes are in the international legal system. The purpose of this study is to explain the institutional position of international security regimes in the legal system governing the international legal system. Employing institutional method in the approach of international law and international relations, and through a systematic analysis of international law, the researchers have defined the structure of the international legal system and have expressed the types of interaction among actors of this system. The results of the research indicated that international institutions allow governments which have not achieved satisfactory results in strategic interactions, to improve better achievements by creating a new balance. For such a balance to stand stable, the community must create the expected shared behavior. Supporting and ensuring such expectations can only be possible through the regime theory acting like a bridge between international law and international relations.