فصلنامه سیاست خارجی
سال بیست و هشتم شماره 1 (پیاپی 109، بهار 1393)

A new micro- discourse within the framework of Islamism macro-discourse emerged in the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the eleventh administration took office on August 4th, 2013. The Rouhani administration pursues an approach that centers as “moderation”. Based on the logic of discourse evolutions and discursive cycles, the moderation discourse can be described as “realist idealism” or in other words as “realistic idealism”. The central argument of moderation discourse is balance and equality, which is defined on the basis of a balance between idealism and realism, various kinds of wisdom, Islamic expediencies and national interests, foreign policy objectives, elements of national power, exerting power and diplomacy, rights and duties, three principles of “glory, wisdom and expediency”, foreign policy structure, and development of foreign relations. The elements and nuances of the moderation discourse are as followings: idealism, realism, balanced rationalism, results-focused task orientation, constructive cooperation, security seeking, prestige seeking, peace seeking, justice, evolutionism, perfectionism, balanced expansionism, and balanced multilateralism. The following research question guides this study: How the moderation policy of the government can serve foreign policy objectives of the Islamic Republic? The author attempts to respond to this question through proving the hypothesis that the moderation discourse as a new micro- discourse within the framework of Islamism macro-discourse has a higher capacity for exercising realism for achieving goals and interests of Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy.

Foreign policy orientation is the attitudes and general commitments of a state towards its foreign environment, its main strategy for implementing external and internal objectives, and for countering permanent threats. This study aims to determine the foreign policy orientation of a revolutionary leader. Therefore, the main question is to find the frequency of foreign policy orientations in the works of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The primary hypothesis was upon some speculations about the superiority or the inferiority of one of the three orientations in a comparison among them. Considering three orientation indexes of “isolationism”, “non-alignment”, and “alliance”, which are derived from Holsti’s theoretical models of foreign policy, and emphasizing on the first ring of Hilsman’s institutional analysis model, which corresponds to the Supreme Leader in Iran, the authors have attempted to prove this conclusion that the abundance of these indexes indicates the precedence of the two orientations of non-alignment and alliance in a religion-based foreign policy. This conclusion is gained through counting the contents, which are associated with the orientation indexes in the quotations and the writings of Ayatollah Khamenei in the period of 1989-2009. The research method is a combination of quantitative analysis (counting the frequencies of those indexes which are related to triple orientations in foreign policy) and qualitative analysis (interpreting the findings). The interpretive finding of this literature indicates that a kind of realism is dominant on quotations and writings of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the aim of keeping the revolutionary foreign policy away from isolationism.

In the past few years, the increasing role of public opinion in international arena from one hand, and also new developments in international arena from the other, has led to the development of a new approach in diplomacy which is called “Public Diplomacy”, and is employed as an instrument for pursuing national interests in the international arena by scholars, researchers, and executive individuals. Since there has not been noticeable study on the public diplomacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the authors attempt to assess Iran’s public diplomacy in a European country with selecting UK Muslims as their statistical population in this literature. Using a wide range of reports collected from some organizations and institutions which are active in the area of public diplomacy as well as Iran’s mission in England, besides interviewing 91 executive individuals and researchers of Iran’s public diplomacy, the literature addresses the following question: What has been the impact of Iran’s public diplomacy on UK Muslims? Using the main definitions of public diplomacy and also scrutinizing the activities of the missions and the representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran in England, the article would accept or reject the hypothesis of Iran’s successful public diplomacy in England. At the end, some solutions would be proposed for a better implementation of an effective role of public diplomacy in strengthening ties with this European country.

At the present, we are witnessing the increasing importance of energy diplomacy and therefore the importance of petroleum as the main political element in the energy cycle. Scrutinizing the frequencies of production and exportation and also investment companies in the presidencies of Mr. Khatami and Mr. Ahmadinejad, we can conclude the importance and necessity of composing energy diplomacy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. A comparative analysis of energy diplomacy with a focus on petroleum during the presidencies of Mr. Khatami and Mr. Ahmadinejad is done using economic liberalism theory especially that of Gilpin. The author addresses the following question: What have been the characteristics of energy diplomacy in the presidential terms of Mr. Khatami and Mr. Ahmadinejad? And whether there was certain energy diplomacy in those periods? The hypothesis of the article is that considering energy diplomacy characteristics, the Islamic Republic of Iran did not have a certain and well-defined energy diplomacy in the mentioned presidential terms. Lack of strategy in the energy field and particularly for petroleum is a similarity in these two presidential terms and their different visions towards diplomacy is considered as their dissimilarities.

In light of recent evolutions in the Middle East, especially the developments in the Arab world since early 2011 and the election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this article attempts to study new factors of Turkey’s Middle East policies and find the reason of recent orientations of Turkey’s foreign policy. The possibility of Turkey’s foreign policy analysis in the framework of national role interpretation in Middle East is the hypothesis of this literature. This article tries to answer the following questions: What roles Turkey is going to play in Middle East? Which interpretations of national role is the recent Turkish foreign policy based upon? Would these policies put Turkey under some limitations or would they add to its maneuverability? To what extent would Turkey’s policies towards Middle East evolutions lead?

In the decades prior to the turn of the twentieth century, the power vacuum resulted from the collapse of the USSR as well as territorial disputes of amongst various ethnicities, with plural ethnic-religious formations and lack of political development, caused the formation of South Caucasus region with an anarchic structure. This region with three independent republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia was suffering from the lack of a common security regime and was influenced by regional and international actors. Meanwhile, opposing interests and goals of regional actors such as Russia, Iran, and Turkey as well as trans-regional ones such as the United States, NATO and the Zionist Regime, made the security environment of South Caucasus confronted with some new challenges caused by geopolitical rivalries. Meanwhile, contrary to its political and security challenges, South Caucasus stands in a high level due to its energy resources and geopolitical and geo-economic importance in international politics equations. Using library research methods and an explanatory – analytical method and with the aim of scrutinizing the impact of rivalry among regional and international actors in the South Caucasus, the present literature addresses the following question: What has been the impact of strategic approaches of regional and international actors on security issues in the South Caucasus? It seems that a negative competition among regional and trans-regional actors has increased in the South Caucasus and this has led to a continuous instability in this strategic sub-region.

During the last decade and simultaneously with the increase of oil price in global markets, a new trend of US energy policy is being shaped in order to reduce US dependence on Persian Gulf oil and gas resources and to move towards energy self- efficiency through an increase of using non-conventional resources (Shell). The questions of this article are the followings; to what extent the exploitation of non-conventional energy has been effective in the implication of US energy self-sufficiency? What has been the impact of exploiting non-conventional energy resources on the importance of the Persian Gulf in US energy security strategy? The hypothesis of this article is that an increase of using non-conventional energy resources has been effective in the reduction of US dependence on Persian Gulf petroleum and can make this country a future rival for traditional energy producers. Decreasing US traditional interventions in Middle East as well as growing inclination to Asia- Pacific region, is a noticeable sign of changing importance of the Persian Gulf for US energy security strategy. Using neo-classic realism, the author tries to scrutinize US energy security policy as a part of its macro strategy of foreign policy.