Iranian Foreign Policy

Paper Summary:

An international relations essay on Iranian foreign policy since the 1979 revolution. The paper argues that foreign policy became incoherent after Khomeini's death in 1989 but notes that Ahmadinejad's leadership has been leading the Islamic Republic back toward its revolutionary roots.

From the Paper:

"In February 1979, a two-day uprising led to the collapse of the Pahlevi monarchy in Iran. The state became the Islamic Republic of Iran, with Ruhollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader until his death in 1989. After the revolution, the state was "defiant, fiercely independent, proactively religious, and nonaligned." This new stance was reflected in the state's foreign policy, which was, overall, coherent until 1988-9. The end of the Cold War, the Iran-Iraq ceasefire, and the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini led to reorientations of policy. In the late eighties and after, under the presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami Iranian foreign policy became more self-contradictory. It unsuccessfully combined pragmatic diplomacy with revolutionary behaviour-seeking ties, for example, with states whose leadership it was trying to undermine. The result is that since 1989, the Islamic Republic of Iran has had an incoherent foreign policy, but the current president has been leading it back toward revolutionary behaviour and increased coherence."

More papers on Iranian Foreign Policy:

• Term Paper # 93948 : "Iran's Foreign Policy"
• Research Paper # 42938 : "U.S. Foreign Policy on Iran"
• Research Paper # 63953 : "Soviet Foreign Policy in Iran 1945-1979"

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