پژوهش نامه ایرانی سیاست بین الملل
پیاپی 2 (بهار و تابستان1392)

One of the aims of politics is the prevention of violence and establishment of peace. In the twentieth century, political thinkers and scholars in diplomacy and international law have devised various techniques to achieve this aim. However, such an attempt has not been limited to the modern era, and classic thinkers both in the East and the West have also thought about such techniques. Ibn-i Farra’s Rosol ol-Molook is one of most important texts written in 5th century Hijri, in this regard. The author was a faqih and a judge serving the Abbasids, in the golden age of Islam or the mediaeval Islamic period. Drawing upon Islamic, Persian and Greek sources, he worte one of the earliest treaties on the Islamic diplomatic practice. Using the phenomenological method, in this article diplomatic technique recommended by Ibd-i Farra, and his views on the characteristics of ambassadors, their training and their manner in a mission as well as formal protocols are discussed.

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, scholars in different fields around the world have studied it, exploiting various approaches. One of these approaches is the cultural change in which survival and self-expression values are analysed. This approach is discussed in the present paper. Given that collective actions in every country are in line with its cultural values and cultural changes, the authors focus on the collective action called Islamic awakening or Arab Spring and try to answer the following questions: what are the characteristics of the beginning and the end of the process of the Arab Spring movement, and on the basis of what type of cultural values is it gathered its momentum. Our hypothesis is that societies’ survival values have led them towards an action, which was very late, violent and complex, and its outcome will only be the reproduction and growth survival values.

Since its very establishment, the Muslim Brotherhood has had an important role in social and political developments in Egypt, a role that was intensified in recent years, following the Egyptian Revolution in January 25, 2011. After Mohammad Morsi’s victory in the presidential election, his sudden fall, and finally the dissolution of the group, the Muslim Brotherhood and its followers have been encountered with great challenges. If we consider the 25th January Revolution as an endeavor to remove dictatorship from Egypt’s political scene and Morsi’s victory in 22 June, 2012 elections as the first serious effort for the stabilization of democracy in the country, then his overthrow and the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood with excuse of breaching democratic rules would pose some questions about the future of democracy in Egypt. Given the eighty years of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activity, the question is to what extent the group is familiar with the rules of democracy, and to what extent it has really violated such rules under Morsi, as its opponents argue.

When the Tunisian Revolution triggered the domino of the collapse Arab leaders, it was not anticipated to reach to Syria creating a deep conflict with local, regional and transregional dimensions. However, when the protests speared to Syria, various players try to exploit it to their own advantage, and an all-out conflict began. Due to Syria's geopolitical location, regional powers such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and trans-regional powers like the US and Russia became involved in the crisis, competing with each other. Considering the nature of the relationship and interdependency between the security of the Islamic Republic of Iran and that of Syria, the question arises as to what are the interests of regional and trans-regional powers in Syria and what will be the impact of their rivalry on Iran’s security? As an answer to the first question, it is argued that behavioural patterns formed by the anarchic structure of the international system has been the cause of the Syrian conflict, as attempts at pursuit of survival and power have led to the conflict of interests and a change in the balance of power. In order to evaluate the consequences of the fall of Assad, Barry Buzan’s concept of existential thereats has been used, as it is argued that such an event would have negative impacts on Iran’s strategic depth, and counts as an existential thereat to it. Using Patrick M. Morgan’s levels of analysis, Kenneth Waltz’s logic of limited number of powers, and the realist theory’s statism, the behaviors of four powerful players in the conflict (the US and Saudi Arabia as the opponents of the status quo and Russia and Iran as its advocates) are analysed.

Developments in the international system and its boundaries and the increasing intensity of communications within it have led to the ineffectiveness of classic approaches to diplomacy. Hence, the discipline of diplomatic studies needs new approaches such as the network theory. In this paper, the authors try to investigate the impact of Iran’s overlapping network on its regional diplomacy, using the analytical model of overlapping network. They believe that Iran's overlapping network and its structural and internal features have affected its regional bargaining power as well as the logical and physical model of its diplomacy. Also, the environment of the overlapping network has provided Iran’s diplomacy with opportunities and restrictions in achieving national interest and goals. From this perspective, smart network diplomacy is one of the most important and conventional diplomatic systems in the new international system.

Conduct and orientation of states in their foreign policy are affected by geopolitical constant and variable factors. The authors of the present paper try to study the impact of variable factors on determining the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy in the 1979- 2005 period, on the basis of Holsti’s trilogy on foreign policy (orientations, national roles and goals). Exploiting the concept of national power derived from geopolitics, they also attempt to explain why different discourses have been dominant in Iran’s foreign policy in various periods. It seems that determining variable factors justify changes in the foreign policy of post-revolutionary Iran.