Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Volume:2 Issue: 3, Fall 2011

During the past couple of months, the military option against Iran – including attacks on its nuclear facilities – has showed up in headlines around the world, especially after the controversial report on Iran’s nuclear energy program by the Director General of the IAEA in the November 2011 meeting of the Agency’s governing council. The logic and quality of such an attack have been debated and questioned by policymakers as well as analysts. The consensus in all these debates is that any military attack on Iran will have disastrous consequence at the regional and global levels, especially at this juncture; triggering a plethora of conflicts, shaking traditional balances of power and increasing strategic ambiguities and a host of economic and financial crises. In this tense context, one of the most striking questions would be "what are the intentions behind a military attack on Iran?

Many western politicians and commentators have described Iran's national security policies in the years after the Islamic Revolution as antagonistic, “breaking the rules of the game" and threatening to other countries. While most Iranian scholars have argued that Iran should not be viewed as a threat to the Middle East and the international society at large. In fact, their counter-argument is that the post-1979 Iran has played a “pacifying” role in its unstable and conflict-prone environment. Important dimensions of Iran’s defense policy will be examined in order to find answers to the following questions: What are the main challenges and opportunities for Iran’s ambition to improve its relative power position in the region, considering the perceptions of the great powers and key regional states of the “Iran threat”? Is Iran’s foreign and security policies expansionist or defensive? Should its defense policy be viewed as a threat to regional security?

Since the changes in the international system resulting from the end of the Cold War and those arising from such global processes as economic globalization and information revolution the role and position of foreign policy in improving political, economic, cultural and security situation of countries have gained more importance. The present paper seeks to answer the question as to what has been the impact of global developments, resulting from changes in the international system and globalization, over the Iran’s foreign policy of Iran in the past two decades. This author is of the view that, pursuant to these developments, economic and cultural tools in furthering foreign policy goals have become more important and, despite the continued emphasis on the earlier principles and ideals of the Islamic Revolution, the country’s foreign policy discourse underwent changes, including the export of revolution discourse, attention to economic variables in foreign policy and changes in foreign policy language.

The relationship between Turkey and Israel, as two impactful countries in the Middle East, is of great important, especially for Iran. The close relationship between these two countries in 1996 gave rise to serious threats against Iran. However, it seems that in the last decade, especially following the rise of the Justice and Development Party (the AKP) to power in Turkey, a kind of tension and coldness began prevailing in Ankara-Tel Aviv relations, entailing positive consequences for Iran. Thus, it is important to consider the relevant domestic, regional and trans-regional developments as well as their impacts on the relationship between Turkey and Israel and their repercussions for Iran. Considering this relationship in the past decade, this paper concludes that the two countries’ relationship continues to diverge, but it is still far from breaking off. This development would benefit Iran’s foreign policy, which is currently undergoing certain challenges in the region.

The American policy of nuclear arms reduction and stressing conventional weapons, including its missile defense system and its role in nuclear deterrence, pose numerous questions on the aims and consequences of the deployment of such a system. Among these questions are whether this system is able to realize nuclear deterrence and what the impact of its deployment would be on security-military behaviors of other states and specifically that of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On the same basis, the main question of this essay is if the missile defense system canestablish nuclear deterrence? The hypothesis put to the test is that the missile defense system cannot play a considerable part in the creation of nuclear deterrence by itself, and that as far as the consequences are concerned, it could fuel an arms race and deteriorate security and stability. The section on consequences argues how the missile system instigates foes and main rivals, provokes peripheral circles of enemies and main competitors, and promotes perceptions of U.S. strategy as offensive rather than defensive. As the confronting of a possible offensive by Iran is declared as one of the aims of the U.S.missile defense shield in Europe, the subsidiary question deals with the potential effect the deployment of the missile defense systemcould have on the security-military behavior of Iran. This paper asserts that the deployment of the system extends perceived insecurity on the part of Iran and pushes the Islamic Republic towards adopting a “reciprocal defensive strategy” or “reciprocal offensive strategy”.

Countries adjacent to the Harirud (Hari River) basin (Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan) suffer from water shortages and simultaneous increasing populations and expanding needs in the agricultural and industrial sectors. These rising problems have illuminated the inefficiency of myopic attitudes and plans which have been implemented in the past years in order to overcome the troubles arising from drought in regional countries. Under such circumstances, expansion of regional cooperation on water questions necessitates the avoiding of realist attitudes to security and water and attention to these two issues within the framework of human security. This framework can lead to the expansion of water cooperation in the Harirud basin countries based on mutual interest of the regional people and meeting their reasonable needs within the region. On this basis, this article emphasizes the necessity of change in traditional attitudes to the question of water and security to prevent the transformation of water shortage to a source of dispute and conflict among regional nations. It also offers solutions for the expansion of water cooperation among Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan in the Harirud basin and overcoming problems arising from water shortage in the region.

In this article, the first issue that is tackled is related to Iran’s sovereignty over its natural resources. In the area of natural resources, a host state acting to preserve the interests of its people may adopt legal measures running counter to the terms of a pre-agreed contract. Therefore, a state may not abide by some provisions of a contract that has been entered into with foreign companies in order to protect the legitimate interests of the country. Under international law, states have the right to nationalize their own natural resources subject to the obligation to compensate the foreign investors. However, the question of whether a state may invoke its sovereign right to disregard its contractual obligations in the presence of a stabilization clause arises. The role of international law will also be examined in order to determine its application to state contracts. It can be gleaned from the material referred to in this article that international law does not have a sufficiently developed body of rules to regulate foreign investments. The second part touches upon a discussion on the applicable law of the contract with regard to the practices of Iran. In so far as the appropriate mechanisms for the settlement of disputes are concerned, foreign corporations that intend to sign agreements with the Iranian public sector must accept the respective Iranian law in their international transactions at inception. The chief justification for adopting this approach relies on the fact that the contracts entered into by the public sector corporations involve the State of Iran and consequently impinge upon its responsibilities. It is the purpose of this study to reflect on these issues and to explore the bases on which they are founded and advanced.

Among all Middle Eastern countries, Iran’s successful involvement in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, and gaining of beneficial experience of reconstructing a foreign country within a framework of collaboration between states and the private sector. The study consists of an introduction, a body consisting of three parts, and a conclusion. In the first part, this article analyze the history of foreign aid, donor countries, and aid organizations are reviewed. The second part studies the political and economic reconstruction of Afghanistan and the international consensus at the Tokyo Conference to help rebuild Afghanistan. The final section discusses Iran's presence in Afghanistan, the establishment of the reconstruction campaign, working groups, as well as specifications of implemented projects and their overall impact. The findings of the article show that in addition to helping reconstruct Afghanistan, and increasing the trade volume and mutual investments, Iran’s aid has led Iranian companies work across borders and offered it experience of participating in the reconstruction of a foreign country.

Shireen T. Hunter, Irans, Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010, 317 pages.