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THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

AT 40.

A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS.

Author: Siavosh Bigonah

Political Science (VT 2019-ST631L-GP759), 2-year Master MA Thesis, 30 credits

Department: Global Political Studies (Faculty of Culture and Society), Malmö University Supervisor: Dr. Johan Brännmark

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Abstract

This Master Thesis departs from the puzzling fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has been able to push forward its agenda of independence and sovereignty from imperially and colonially inherited systems of dominance, based in a militant discourse of resistance and peace, exponentially gaining regional and international influence, despite its lack of militar y and economic hard power. Applying discourse analysis (archaeology and genealogy) on mainly Iranian primary sources, e.g. IRI’s constitution and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speeches, the thesis seeks to answer the question: which is the narrative attraction of IRI’s foreign policy discourse as it has been presented at the UNGA opening sessions during its first 40 years? The thesis concludes that IRI’s foreign policy discourse, which is focused on state-based resistance to domination, emanates to a narrative attraction, thus generating legitimac y and space of manoeuvre for its foreign policy interests. By analysing IRI’s foreign policy discourse based on a reading of IRI’s foreign policy within its own logics, the thesis intends to fill a gap in the research of IRI’s foreign policy through the extensive use of primary Iranian sources.

Word count: 21 672

Key Words: Islamic Republic of Iran; discourse analysis; foreign policy; dialogue; security networking; peace; resistance.

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PREFACE

This Master thesis must be read as the continuation of my Bachelor thesis work, and as such it emanates from my BA study on the political and cultural history of Iran and the relationship of that history to that of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) contemporary foreign policy under President Rouhani. The primary aim was to gain an in-depth view-from-within, of the country’s stance on international politics and peace. To that end, I employed Foucault’s methodology of archaeology and genealogy on historical and contemporary data, taking into account 4000-years of recorded history. The primary findings of that study have shed light on the major research gaps concerning Iran in peace research and thus de-validating the discipline’s claim of being universally relevant, uncovering a cultural political sphere of deep-rooted practices of structural peace, state-building, conflict management, continuous movements of people and changing political centres. The historical experiences of multi-religiosity, multi-ethnicity and multi-polarity have greatly contributed to the forging of a foreign political discourse of peace in IRI, centred around a discourse of transnational anti-colonial imperial resistance, translat ing into a historical nexus of resistance predominant in Shi’ism (Bigonah 2017).

An important conclusion drawn from that study is the centrality of a combatative form of poly-cultural, syncretic and multireligious resistance practices in modern Iran. The foundatio na l aspects of the Iranian social fabric, and economic, political and religious practices have emanated from cosmopolitan experiences since Achaemenian times ca. 500 BCE—a de facto cosmopolitan reality spanning two and a half millennia (see Bausani 1975, Nordberg 1979, Meskoob 1992, Boyce 1982, Regueiro et.al. 2006, Vlassopoulos 2013, Alishan 2014, Jahanbegloo 2014, Dahlén 2014 and 2016, for additional references on this issue see Bigonah 2017). The continuity of these experiences is inscribed in a long tradition of theologic a l, historiographic and philosophical works set off by the Islamic conquest (7th century CE) and the subsequent inclusion of pre-Islamic thought in the exponential growth of Islamic science and philosophy (Nasr et al. 2008-15, Dabashi 2011 and 2012, Ahmed 2016). Since the inception of colonial modernity in Asia (Dabashi 2007, Frankopan 2015), following the fall of the Mughal state and empire in the wake of the destructive episodes leading up to Nader Shah’s sack of Delhi in 1739 (Farrokh 2011), and the ensuing episodes of European imperial conquest, set in motion a trajectory towards combatative resistance practices in West and Central Asia. European imperial colonialism—by definition a universalised provincial proposition (Shari’ati 1979, Al-e Ahmad 1984, Mbembe 2003, Wallerstein 2006, Mottahedeh 2009, Frankopan 2015, Dabashi 2015 and 2016, Bell 2017)—represented a particular enforcement of acculturat io n.

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The experiences of this, and the residual cultural, political and economic effects of colonia l imperial dominance gave rise to a trajectory of anti-imperialist resistance (Keddie 2006, Lapidus 2014). In Iran this resistance subsequently transmuted and transformed into a particularly transnational form of resistance discourse, which became paradigmatic to the modern revolutionary movements in the country—from the religiously conscient secular political movements to the Islamic ones (Foucault 1978, Ahmad 1984, Keddie 2006, Mottahedeh 2009, Dabashi 2011)—all of which are of importance to the edificial point of departure in this thesis.

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Table of Content

Introduction ... 7

Problem statement ... 7

Puzzle, objectives and research question ... 7

Contextualisation... 8

Delimitations... 10

Outline of the thesis ... 11

Methodological conside rations and analytical frame work ... 12

Design and methodological choice ... 12

Method ... 13

Data... 14

Research techniques... 16

Analytical framework: the conceptualisation of continuous resistance ... 17

Surveying the field: On Iranian Foreign Policy ... 23

Military power and regional dominance ... 24

Readings of Great Game Logics ... 27

A reading of the Constitution... 33

A profoundly Islamic state ... 33

Constitutional amendments ... 35

IRI’s foreign policy discourse: The discursive webs of violence, justice and peace ... 38

The discursive web of violence (sharr) ... 39

The discursive web of justice (adl) ... 45

The discursive web of peace (salaam) ... 49

IRI’s foreign policy practice ... 54

Dialogue and security ... 55

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The importance of being IRI: Concluding discussion ... 61

Narratives of attraction... 61

Contribution of this study to foreign policy research and global politics ... 64

Further research... 64

Abbreviations ... 66

Glossary... 67

Bibliography ... 69

Works cited ... 69

List of Source Material ... 79

Appendix 1: List of elements ... 92

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Introduction

What will happen to a man who knowingly places his head in the dragon’s maw? (Ferdowsi 2016:41)

With the revolutionary establishment of the expressly Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) in 1979, theology, and Twelver Shi’a theology in particular, was affirmed as state-bearing. As a consequence of the revolution, militant resistance was lodged at the very centre of state policy, specifically in the intertwined area of foreign and defence policy (Khomeini n.d., Arjomand 1984, Moussavi 2004, Dabashi 2011, 2016, Pirseyedi 2013).

Problem statement

The West’s, and in particular the USA’s relations with IRI have for many reasons been complicated since 1979. The revolutionary militancy with which IRI critiqued both former colonial powers and contemporary imperial tendencies, in combination with nationalisation of its resources, rendered the country a pariah status internationally. Yet, today IRI enjoys the status not of pariah but of significant partner, to the EU and Europe, to China and to the Global South alike. The Belt and Road Project (or New Silk Road) plays an important role in this change. However, less tangible but perhaps as important, is the remarkable change in conceptualisation of international relations, which may be detected among politicians in Europe, Asia, Africa and parts of the Americas, as a wave increasing its momentum : conceptualisations emanating from Dialogue among Civilisations (DAC), an Iranian initiat i ve, grown out of IRI’s experiences and discourse since 1979. IRI’s foreign policy rests on an anti-colonial paradigm (Leverett and Leverett 2013, Pirseyedi 2013, Parsi 2017) forged around a historical discourse of resistance (Bigonah 2017), a paradigm older than the revolution itself, continuously reappearing through time and space (Dabashi 2007, 2011, 2015, Mottahedeh 2009, Bigonah 2017). We know very little about this discourse, however, as foreign policy research on Iran has shown scant interest for it. Departing from this realisation, this Master thesis will focus on Iranian foreign policy as discourse and from within its own logics, from the inception of IRI to 2018, thence covering an existing research gap.

Puzzle, objectives and research question

Many struggle to read the current global situation, and to understand the extent and depth of the relationships IRI have been building since the 1980s—hence, IRI is often mistakenly read as attempting to dominate the regions of which it is part, despite the characteristics of its

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military and economic capacities. It seems puzzling then, that Iran, despite lacking the militar y and economic power necessary to project hard and soft power strategies of domination, have in fact been able to push forward its agenda of independence and sovereignty from imperia l ly and colonially designed systems of dominance, based in a militant discourse of resistance and peace, exponentially gaining influence in the regions, which it is part of, and indeed beyond. This thesis takes its cue from this puzzle, and focuses on Iran’s revolutionary discourse —the immateriality of its power of attraction—in the international arena, as it is presented through its foreign policy from 1979 to the present, with the objective to firstly, gain a deeper understating of IRI’s foreign policy discourse from within, and how it is made meaningful beyond IRI, i.e. in an international context; and secondly, how this is reflected in IRI’s foreign policy practices, seeking an answer to the question: which is the narrative attraction of IRI’s foreign policy discourse as it has been presented at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) opening sessions during its first 40 years, as read from within IRI’s own deployme nt (in speech and act) of this discursive field?

Contextualisation

Iran is situated at the cross-roads of East and North Africa, West, Central and South Asia. It shares land, water and coastal borders with fifteen neighbouring states, and finds itself in an instable and precarious geo-political environment given the wars and conflicts in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the cold war tensions and sporadic clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and chronic instability in the Sistan-Baluchistan region, shared with Pakistan. Following the signing and subsequent implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015-6, the unilateral withdrawal from that deal by the USA in May 2018, and the renewed imposition of heavy sanctions by the USA, Iran has found itself in an historically unprecedented situation, in which one United Nations (UN) member state punishes other UN member states for complying with and (attempting to) implement a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution in spite of the target country’s full complia nce with it (S/2019/496[2019]). As a result of the US withdrawal tensions in the Persian Gulf have risen considerably, with potential disastrous regional and global consequences.

Due to its geo-strategical location, its cultural and political importance, and its richness in a number of resources (from agriculture to minerals and hydrocarbons), Iran has historically been vulnerable to great power penetration (Leverett and Leverett 2013, Frankopan 2015, Elling 2019), and continues to be at the heart of great power interests of control. IRI came into being

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through internal revolutionary resistance to such foreign involvement (Mottahedeh 2009, Elling 2019), and amid enormous pressures from the outside: the invasion by one of its immediate neighbours and subsequent inactive UN; international political and militar y unrelenting support for the aggressor; sanctions; increasing instability and refugee influx from Afghanistan, which the USSR invaded in 1979; and confronted with overwhelming firepower, unabated chemical weapons warfare, and the War of the Cities1 (Rajaee 1993, Farrokh 2011, Leverett and Leverett 2013, Pirseyedi, Olympians300 2018, Elling 2019).

The Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980 proved to be a trial by fire for the emerging revolutionary state, that in spite of the above, as well as internal instability and turmoil including regular assassinations and terrorism, an army in structural disarray due to the revolutionary purge, lack of military equipment and external support, succeeded in defending its territorial integrity and sovereignty for the first time in two centuries (Nordberg 1979, Farrokh 2011, Keddie 2006, Leverett and Leverett 2013). The ‘imposed war’ or ‘the Holy Defence’ as it is called in Iran, succeeded, despite the overwhelming lack of materially based capabilities—Iran even managed to mount offensives inside Iraq (Rajaee 1993, Farrokh 2011, Leverett and Leverett 2013, Pirseyedi 2013). In 1987 Khamenei, then President, said about the war: “We were first taken by surprise, we should admit. Our preoccupation with innumerab le internal problems relating to the revolution and our lack of sufficient experience made the invasion possible; but the particular characteristics of this revolution came to our rescue” (A/42/PV.6[1987]).

Thus, the reason why Iran managed to defend not only its territory, but also the revolut io n itself, despite the redoubtable adverse asymmetrical conditions, have to be sought in the immaterial realm rather than in material factors. In essence, the immaterial dimensions such as the power of the revolutionary narrative created the necessary conditions for Iranians to engage in the struggle despite the overwhelming odds pivoted against them. Indeed, such narratives seem to be central to the attractive power of IRI far beyond the war, and the Persian Gulf or even West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, where IRI commands a narrative of

1 An estimated 100.000 Iranians died from the Iraqi chemical attacks during the 1980s (Leverett and Leverett

2013a, Pirseyedi 2013) to the complete silence of the international community (Leverett and Leverett 2013). Iran never answered with chemical attacks, but amended their Non-Offensive Defence (NOD) strategy to allow for conventional retaliation (Pirseyedi 2013) midway through the war.

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resistance and knowingly employs it to strategic effect (Leverett and Leverett 2013a and 2013b).

The war signified the strengthening of the Islamic character of the Iranian revolution of 1978-79, consolidating its inconclusive pre-war status, while internationally becoming an undeniab le factor through its territorial defence, and unrelenting and unabated colonial and anti-imperialist revolutionary resistance discourse at the international level, most notably at the UNGA.

Delimitations

A clear delimitation in this thesis is the time-frame used, from 1979 to 2019, which constitutes the current life-span of the revolutionary state of Iran. During this period, Iran has gone through a revolution, a referendum deciding constitutional change from monarchy to a participator y model of theocracy, invasion and subsequent war (1980-1988), post-war reconstruction and political stabilisation amid global and unilateral sanctions regimes. All these historical ruptures certainly have different types of impact at different levels. However, this thesis will exclusive ly be limited to foreign policy discourse, and practices as expressed in international contexts. Another delimitation is the exclusive focus on foreign policy in its explicit relation to external factors, i.e. internal political dynamics are not accounted for. The reasons for such a choice are that it is extremely difficult to get access to meaningful (i.e. not superfluous) information about such dynamics, and while such dynamics ought to show in the speeches of the UNGA opening sessions the effects of them on foreign policy are difficult to determine unless there are major deviations/discontinuities in the discourse itself. The study of such internal political dynamics is however an interesting topic for another research project.

The collected data-set itself also represents certain limitations, which has to do with the data collection field, i.e. the internet and mainly online media sources. Irrefutably, interviews with key decision-makers would have provided the study with an additional aspect, though steering the study in a different, narrower direction. However, as a Master student, it is not realistic to opt for such a design since access would be denied on grounds of juniority.

To some, viewing IRI’s foreign policy from within an Iranian perspective may seem too narrow. However, most research on Iran tends not to consider IRI as a rational actor in its own sense, and therefore there is a research gap lodged in the bare fact that primary Iranian sources are not utilised, hence our understanding of IRI’s foreign policy behaviour and motivations are dimmed by the provincialised and mythological tendencies in both research and media

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coverage (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013, Parsi 2017, Halimi & Rimbert 2019, Shupak 2019).

Outline of the thesis

Following this introduction, the methodological considerations and analytical framework of the thesis are discussed, followed by a survey of the field of research on Iran’s foreign policy pertaining to both a contemporary and historical reading.

The analysis is divided into three chapters, of which the chapter on IRI’s UNGA speeches (chapter 5) is by far the longest, and placed in between a chapter on the constitutional aspects (chapter 4) of relevance to this study, and a chapter discussing the deployment of the foreign policy discourse (chapter 6).

The last chapter is the concluding discussion in which this study returns to the objectives and research question in order to answer the question regarding the narrative attraction of IRI’s foreign policy discourse at the international level since 1979.

A glossary is provided at the end of the thesis, explaining unfamiliar concepts used througho ut. Lastly, there are also two appendices of importance, the first being a compilation of the statements and elements forming an important part of the data on which the analysis in chapter 5 is based, and the second being a chronological listing of the UNGA speeches, the speakers and the presidents under who the speeches were delivered.

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Methodological considerations and analytical

framework

We must question those ready-made syntheses, those groupings that we normally accept before any examination, those links whose validity is recognized from the outset; we must oust those forms and obscure forces by which we usually link the discourse of one man with that of another; they must be driven out from the darkness in which they reign. And instead of according them unqualified, spontaneous value, we must accept in the name of methodological rigor, that, in for instance, they concern only a population of dis persed events. (Foucault 2010a:22)

In what ensues the thesis’ design, methodological choices and analytical framework will be presented and discussed. The study applies discourse analysis as it was developed by Michel Foucault, and is hence based in the constructivist tradition in the social sciences. In Politica l Science, the ability to make predications could somehow be said to have primacy. While this is not the aim as such of a Foucauldian analysis, which is focused on making sense of history in the present, such an analysis may also have predictive capabilities. Prediction thence, may be understood as the ability to puzzle out why an actor in the international system behaves in particular ways, based on an analysis of that actor’s discourses and discursive practices, rather than on predefined and generalised theoretical assumptions and models of causalities.

The structure of this and the next chapter follows the outline common for such an analysis, i.e. the methods discussion is directly linked to the analytical framework, and the discussion of relevant literature (i.e. surveying the field) is focused on critically assessing the literature rather than describing it—it is analytical more than descriptive.

Design and methodological choice

This study’s design is discourse analysis, while the methods adopted are Foucault’s archaeology and genealogy, which in essence attends to historically grounded interpret ive analysis of contemporary politics and political phenomena. As a Foucauldian discourse analysis cannot take historical events and presented causalities for granted, the more commonly used historical methods in Political Science, e.g. comparative historical analysis and process tracing (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003, Beach 2016) are difficult to apply.

One could arguably turn to poststructural policy analysis, e.g. Bacchi and Goodwin (2016). While this methodological approach is derived from Foucault’s discourse analysis, it is too narrowly focused on policy with emphasis on problematisation of society, whereas this study is interested in a discursive phenomenon. Somers’ (1994) narrative analysis is another method

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to be considered. However, it mainly attends to the analysis of narrative relationships and networks as they play out in the present. It is not concerned with the time-space aspects of the emanation of specific narratives. Qualitative content analysis (Schreier 2012) could also be considered. One obvious advantage with this approach is its inherent capacity to harness a large amount of data, which in turn can be analysed by using software tools such as Nvivo. Yet, as the method departs from a predefined set of themes, concepts and categories, it limits the possibility to assess and reassess data while it is being gathered and analysed. A process of constant reassessment is of utmost importance when engaging a highly contested and understudied field of inquiry. In addition, it is not necessarily a sound method for analysing historically dynamic events.

In the discussion on constructivism and qualitative research, which forms the foundation of this thesis, it is important to shed some light on issues of epistemological points of departure. In a constructivist qualitative discourse analysis “theory and method are intertwined and researchers must accept the basic philosophical premises in order to use discourse analysis as their method of empirical study” (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002:4, emphasis in original). In line with these premises, a discourse analytical study cannot therefore ignore or underplay “the epistemological, theoretical and methodological implications of incorporating non-discourse analytical theories into a discourse analytical framework” (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002:155), which is often the case in constructivist research on Iranian foreign policy (e.g. Nia 2010, Al-Marzouq 2016, Haghgoo et al. 2017,Uzun and Ekşi 2017, Jafari et al. 2018). In constructivist research, knowledge is rather understood as context bound, meaning that researchers cannot ontologically detach themselves from the studied context and its particular contingenc ies (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002). Ultimately, a considerable amount of primary source material is an absolute requirement for construing a composite contextual field in which the methods of analysis are applied.

Method

Departing from the above-mentioned considerations, this study’s design is a discourse analys is directed by the methodological framework developed by Foucault (Kendall and Wickham 1999, Foucault 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). Methodologically, it therefore rests on archaeological and genealogical methods of research. Such research requires detailed previous insights into the field of research, while such knowledge tends to be of a particular kind, i.e. the result of systematic ordering of discourses, reflecting their ultima te state. According to Foucault, this kind of historical knowledge is only “the final result of a long

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and sinuous development involving language (langue) and thought, empirical experience and categories, the lived and ideal necessities, the contingency of events and the play of forma l constraints” (Foucault 2010a:76, emphasis in original). As this represents only the starting point of the research process, to engage in archaeological research one needs to dig into the pre-systematics of the disorder of uncertainties. Thus, archaeological research aims to uncover the layers of discursive formations beyond “the terminal states of discourse” (ibid.). In other words, “Behind the completed system, what is discovered by the analysis of formations is […] an immense density of systematicities, a tight group of multiple relations” (Foucault 2010a:76). Whereas archaeology could be defined as the descriptive element in Foucault’s discourse analysis, genealogy in turn, accounts for the strategic and analytical development of that, which is uncovered through archaeology, making it relevant to present concerns (Kendal and Wickham 1999, Foucault 2010c). Therefore, genealogy prescribes analysis to “be conducted […] on the basis of and from the point of view of the analysis of discursive practises and forms of veridifications”2 (Foucault 2010c:41), carried out on the bedrock of archaeologica ll y uncovered systems of thought. In essence, discourse analysis implies a process of de-construction of meaning, followed by a re-de-construction showing how a particular discourse came about, that is, showing it to be a social and cultural product rather than natural or a truth. The archaeological analysis performed in the preceding Bachelor thesis, as well as in the analytical framework, and the discussion in the survey of the field of research on Iranian foreign policy below, represent such analyses of the systems of thought, both Iranian and modern Western, paving the way for a genealogical analysis of IRI’s foreign policy since 1979.

Data

In research data is key. Charmaz (2006:16) quotes Glaser (2002) saying that “all is data”. Primary sources include governmental documents; media material; treaties; documentat io n from negotiations and procedures manifesting actions (Klotz and Lynch 2007). Additiona l ly, primary sources consist also of historical documents and texts obtained from a variety of other sources (Finnegan 2006), all of which are extant texts “that the researcher had no hand in shaping” (Charmaz 2006:35). To Foucault, data is indeed ‘all’ in his analyses of mechanisms of power. When “investigating where and how, between whom, between what points, according to what process, and with what effect, power is applied” (Foucault 2007:2), it implies

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that whatever is relevant to the analysis, be it architectural constructions, YouTube videos, war propaganda posters, political utterances, dress codes or any other type of human expression, is therefore possible primary source material.

According to Foucault (2010a:29), one “must choose, empirically, a field in which the relations are likely to be numerous, dense, and relatively easy to describe”. Hence, this study consists of primary sources focused on the transcribed UNGA speeches by Iranian officia ls from 1979 to 2018, and the Iranian constitution. The primary sources also include news items, visual material, policy documents, theoretical writings of Iranian statesmen, transcripts of speeches and utterances, meetings, signing of agreements etcetera providing information on Iranian foreign policy foot-prints. This data-set has been collected from the internet, ranging from the UN online library, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, blogs, online news outlets, YouTube, government and inter-state organisations’ sites.

The other data-set is made up of different types of academic productions—critical literat ure and indirect sources. This type of source material comprises academic productions and is thus treated as instruments (Eco 2015) assisting the analysis in terms of contextualisation in this study. This data-set is composed of a selection of Hamid Dabashi’s seminal work on post-orientalism and the combatative disposition of Iranian political thought since the Islamic conquest, which is crucial to this study (Dabashi 2007, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019). Two other central works are Going to Tehran (2013a) by Hillary Mann Leverett and Flynt Leverett3, explaining Iran’s foreign policy behaviour through the rational actor prism and balance of power theory, and Pirseyedi’s (2013) research on Iran’s positionings and foreign policy stance during international negotiations on disarmament and arms proliferation, both of which are thoroughly based in primary source material. Leverett and Leverett (2013a) and Pirseyedi (2013) are both scholarly works on Iranian political practices from a political science perspective, placing IRI’s foreign policy in a regional and global context.

Following the logics of archaeology and genealogy utterances are separated in, or cropped out from, the data set. These are found in that which has actually been said, agreed upon, signed, or expressed as intentions of implementation. Of interest is the verbal communication and action(s) present as ‘facts’ (utterances) in the primary source data set, corroborated by the

3 Mann Leverette and Leverette worked at the US National Security Council, State Department, in the US UN

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indirect sources (while important, non-verbal communication4 is not considered in this thesis). Due to the sheer amount of data, only the most explicit (easily described) and representative quotes relating to the statements will be cited in the thesis—i.e. every quote is representative of the same or similar utterances across the data set.

Research techniques

A Foucauldian discourse analysis employs a combination of archaeology and genealogy. In its bare form, archaeology consists of the re-ordering of dispersed elements in a collateral space, i.e. as an archaeologist uncovering each element in their un-attached state, layer by layer, as if brushing off dust, even of that which seems insignificant. In this process “we must rid ourselves of a whole mass of notions, each of which, in its own way, diversifies the theme of continuity” (Foucault 2010a:21). In practical terms, this means

to grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurrence; determine its conditions of existence, fix at least its limits, establish its correlations with other statements, that may be connected with it, and show what other forms of statements it excludes […] we must show why it could not be other than it was, in what respect it is exclusive of any other, how it assumes, in the midst of others and in relation to them, a place that no other could occupy. (ibid.:28)

The strategy employed in an archaeological analysis starts in defining statements, and continues by separating these from their links to what makes them appear natural (i.e. obvious or true)—e.g. ‘dominance’ in the scientific corpus of international relations—which are then placed in a collateral space. ‘Dominance’ may be defined as part of an enunciative field, which allows several adjacent discursive fields to feed into what we understand to be the true value(s) of the statement. A collateral space is made up of a number of such statements, which each and every one can be related to “a whole adjacent field” (ibid.:97). Moving into genealogy, the analysis is preoccupied by tracing all of the adjacent fields forming a complex web of discourses, each one leaning on, borrowing from and excluding other statements. The idea of ‘dominance’ as a natural strive of all actors in interstate relations, can thereby be traced to the notion of hegemony as the most desirable outcome, which then by extension is linked to a history of imperial colonialism and enlightenment ideals, borrowing the foundatio na l understanding of Western (historically Roman Christian) social and political organisation as natural (true or God-given), producing a universalisation of provincial readings of state actors,

4 An example of a non-verbal statement is the fact that Iranian male state representatives never wear ties and

correspondingly female state representatives always wear chador (or headscarves, i.e. rousari)—practices, which form part of a larger resistance discourse, i.e. hijab (dresscode), such as the tielessness for men and the chador or rousari, for women, symbolising a particular authenticity in defiant opposition to liberal modernity.

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as either ‘modern’ (i.e. Western, democratic, developed, secular) or ‘traditional’ (non-Western, non-democratic, un/der developed, religious).

This process implies that as a researcher one must disturb the tranquillity with which veridifications are deployed, and rather scrutinise the way in which these are constructed and justified—hence imploding the truth claims in these texts—re-arranging the elements5 uncovered in other possible ways, creating an empirically driven collateral space. When re-arranging, i.e. making new connections between the various elements (that is, observing correlations between and transformations of concepts, statements, thematic choices etc.), a discursive formation appears making it possible to link seemingly unrelated elements with one another: “it is not therefore an interpretation of the facts of the statements that might reveal them, but the analysis of their coexistence” (ibid.:29). In this manner “freeing them of all the groupings that purport to be natural, immediate, universal unities, one is able to describe other unities but this time by means of a group of controlled decisions” (ibid.).

Analytical framework: the conceptualisation of continuous resistance

This thesis departs from the historical roots of the combatative elements in IRI’s foreign policy (Bigonah 2017), fundamentally based on indigenous models of cooperation and security, formulated as an alternative (Pirseyedi 2013, Leverett and Leverett 2013a and 2013b), or even as a radically different form of international relations, in theory and practice. It is grounded in readings of history, which are not linear (as in e.g. total history, see Foucault 2010a), and on what in Iranian discourse is understood as fundamental “non-revocable Islamic beliefs ” (Alikhani 2012:3) derived from the Qur’an as well as from the exemplar conduct of the Imams6. While IRI’s conduct of international relations rests on these Islamic fundamentals, the conceptualisations of events tend to collapse time and space—i.e. events distant in time may come to play in the present with urgent immediacy and physical presence, as a personal (re)experience, rather than as a retelling of past events with only symbolic importance in the present—a time-space collapse in which historical events are ever re-lived as a personal, public and political event, which transforms and transmutes within its contemporary politica l particularities (Bausani 1975, Mottahedeh 2009, Dabashi 2011, Elling 2019).

5 Words and conceptualisations linked to statements .

6 In Twelver Shi’a Islam, there are only 12 (infallible) Imams, all descended from the Prophet Mohammad, the

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The concept of a time-space collapse is difficult to explain, and to understand (see Nordberg 1988, Keddie 1995, Mottahedeh 2009, Afary & Anderson 2005, Dabashi 2011, Adelkhah 2015, Mahallati 2016 and Elling 2019 for eloquent deliberations on this issue). It draws on the intersection of the Shi’a concept of shahadat (martyrdom) and the Sufi concept of fana (or fanaa, the annihilation of the Self), allowing mythical discourses of confronting tyrannic a l order to become real-life resistance even to death as “the ordinary lives of […] revolutio nar y figures become iconic the instant they are (body and soul) transfused into a mythic mode of mimesis” (Dabashi 2011:87).

To understand this time-space collapse it is essential to understand the continuum of wha t Dabashi calls the Karbala complex (2011), a time-space collapse of historical instances of resistance to tyranny, through the exemplar conduct of Imam Hussain and his followers’ martyrdom at hands of Yazid’s (re-written as absolute evil) army at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE/61 AH, and Imam Hussain’s death (Ashura). It encapsulates an inherent capacity of the narrative of Hussein’s martyrdom to metamorphose into a whole range of adjacent narratives across time and space7 through a constant re-enactment, re-living, re-experiencing of the trauma experienced by Hussein and his followers. It is deployed as a discursive Shi’a practice in which one full month, Muharram, of each year is dedicated to the remembrance, and the popular re-experiencing, of the traumatic events at Karbala (Afary & Anderson 2005). The Karbala complex might be explained as a reverberating echolocation reflecting politica l contexts of injustice, tyranny and oppression, whether in early Islamic history (Dabashi 2011), during Safavid rule (Yildirim 2015, Moazzen 2016) or in the present (Afary & Anderson 2005): “If tyranny is not resisted, there will be something missing in the moral composition of the universe. Revolt is the ‘natural’ state of a Shi’i historical presence” (Dabashi 2011:84). In the greater scheme of Shi’a doctrine, resisting tyranny is essential; the return of the occulted Imam Mahdi is dependent on the establishment of peace, i.e. on the choice of each individual to resist evil. It lends itself to regulatory power mechanisms (Bigonah 2017), as well as to local interpretations transforming a historical trauma to a matter of personal experience (Dabashi, 2011, speaks of this as a matter of post-traumatic stress).

7 Such as in the Muharram celebrations in Pakistan (Keddie 1995), and the Passion Plays enacted in Catholic

South France (Biet 2012), based on Shi’i Tazy’ie (passion plays enacted across the Shi’i world during the Holy month of Muharram, in which Hussein is brutally slain by Yazid to the horror of the audiences, see e.g. Afary & Anderson 2005 and Dabashi 2011).

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In IRI political discourse the figure of Yazid has transfigured, over time from the Shah and Saddam Hussein, to the super-powers of the day. Afary & Anderson (2005:1) read the re-appearance of the Karbala narrative into the revolution: “In 1978, Khomeini personified the innocent Hussein, the shah stood for his nemesis Yazid, and those protestors killed by the shah’s brutal repression were seen as martyrs in the tradition of Hussein’s seventh-century follower”. In other words, “The Karbala complex is […] the gradual mutation of the central trauma of Shi’ism (the Battle of Karbala) into a nexus of emotive responses and politica l instincts that are then doctrinally codified and cast into a full panoramic history” (Dabashi 2011:86) with cataclysmic consequences.

The archetypical mode of resistance in the Karbala scenario, the success in failure, i.e. resistance in and of itself is success even if fatal (martyrdom), the principle stance to resist despite the opponents’ overwhelming power and capabilities, establishes a quintessentia l prescriptive moral and political duty to resist what is conceived of as oppressive and tyrannic a l discourses and practices. In Khomeini’s political writings (e.g. Khomeini n.d.) this is understood as the requirement to oppose domination and hegemony in all its forms and to extend the principled resistance not only to the Islamic umma (Islamic community) but to what he defines as mustasafin (the dispossessed), or in its internatio nal designation, to defend countries and peoples who lack power and are exploited by the mustakbirun (oppressors), e.g. powerful states applying their might to dominate others.

The prescriptive duty to resist oppression rests on a particular understanding of what in Islamic lingua is denominated sharr, which may be translated into the realist concepts of hard and soft power, i.e. dominance and hegemony through threat or use of direct violence and the ability to attract and co-opt others via indirect, symbolic and cultural violence8. Colonial imperial is m and hegemony must be considered statements representative of sharr in IRI’s discourse, which may also help in understanding the militancy with which IRI representatives talk about the USA—as a representative not only of present-day hegemonic aspirations, but as more

8 Nye defines soft power as getting others to “want what you want ” without the application of coercive (hard)

power (Nye 1990:31). Soft power may be expressed as s ymbolic violence, i.e. the internalisation by the oppressed of the oppressor’s interests (Bourdieau & Waquant 1992). Galtung (1969, 1990, 2005) uses the concept of cultural violence, which makes other forms of violence against another seem natural or right, e.g. the might makes right continuum. The use of the modern-traditional binaries signifies a particular kind of cultural and symbolic violence in which ‘the Other’ is convinced of his or her own society as less valuable than that of the hegemon (‘the Self’).

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profoundly dangerous in a much wider and cosmologically acute sense than what realist theory captures.

As such, the Shi’i modus of resistance in its modern political, state bearing capacity was developed by Imam Khomeini and other prominent scholars at the shrine city of Najaf (Iraq) during the 1960s and -70’s, and lodges the moral and religious duty “to oppose corrupt and illegitimate rulers and to confront injustice” (Leverett and Leverett 2013a:33) at the centre of political discourse and order. In Khomeini’s collection of lectures on Islamic Governme nt (n.d.), he attends to the issue of global injustice, while simultaneously writing off the quietist religious stance (opposing the direct involvement of the ulama, i.e. theologians, in politics):

If you pay no attention to the policies of the imperialists, and consider Islam to be simply the few topics you are always studying and never go beyond them, then the imperialists will leave you alone. Pray as much as you like; it is your oil they are after why should they worry about your prayers? They are after our minerals, and want to turn our country into a market for their goods. That is the reason the puppet governments they have installed prevent us from industrializing, and instead, establish only assembly plants and industry that is dependent on the outside world. (Khomeini n.d.:31)

This quote represents not only Khomeini’s critical analysis of the actual political economic realities and conditions under which Iran, and other countries in the developing world, as it was, found themselves, but attends to the very conceptualisation of mustasafin and mustakbirun, and the continuation of systems of oppression—a political imposition requiring an acceptance of global political economic status quo, i.e. structural, cultural and symbolic violence, for its maintenance. In so doing he also offends those who “are always studying” by an implicit reference to Mulla Sadrā’s (2015) understanding of human-ness as the comprehension of the essence of immaterial existence in combination with sensitive power, which generates motion and thus material force—resistance against imperialism is based on such comprehension leading to action. In one move, Khomeini thereby also connects the sensed acute need to confront evil in his time, as Hussain did at Karbala, by defining human-ness as action, tapping into a collateral space (Karbala), prescribing resistance:

They [colonialists] do not want us to be true human beings, for they are afraid of true human beings. Even if only one true human being appears, they fear him, because others will follow him and he will have an impact that can destroy the whole foundation of tyranny, imperialism, and government by puppets. […] whenever some true human being has appeared, they have either killed or imprisoned and exiled him. (Khomeini n.d.:31)

In a stroke Khomeini collapses the exemplary conduct of Imam Hussain’s resistance (‘if only one true human being appears’) which led to subsequent revolts and the final demise of the hegemonic Umayyad order (Mottahedeh 2009, Dabashi 2011, Elling 2019), and transfigur ing

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his martyrdom to all times including his own, using both historical and contemporary examples of ‘killed or imprisoned and exiled’ true human beings. In the 1960’s and -70’s this included such diverse figures as e.g. Che Guevara or indeed the biblical Jesus and other anti-imperia l ist and revolutionary figures (e.g. Shari’ati 1979, Dabashi 2011) such as Khomeini himse lf. However, he also makes the entire fate of the Imamate appear as ever-evolving, always renewed and re-conceptualised through time and space, constantly reviving the required resistance to oppression. Foucault (1978) observed this particular understanding of resistance in 1978 with percipience: “Although invisible before his promised return, the Twelfth Imam is neither radically nor fatally absent. It is the people themselves who make him come back, insofar as the truth to which they awaken further enlightens them”9—that is, as Khomeini stated, to consciously realise and confront the anti-thesis to what is defined as a true human being. This, it is argued, requires the establishment of a peaceful world order, free from the imposition of domination, i.e. tyranny, and the tools of violence instrumental for its maintenance. Against tyranny stands independence and sovereignty on which security, peace and justice is based (Khomeini n.d.).

As IRI is an Islamic theocratic state system, an obvious point of reference for politics should be the Qur’an, and being a Twelver Shi’a state the conduct of the Imams should come to play in foreign policy. The prescription of accepting and respecting difference as a prerequisite for human relations in politics is enshrined in the Qur’an (Huda 2010, Ibrahim 2013, Pal 2017). In IRI this has been translated to state policy, in the form of a number of legal fundamenta ls regarding the respect for other peoples and hence for IRI’s conduct of international relations (Alikhani 2012). The concept of human dignity prescribes an obligation on the part of government “to respect the dignity of all human beings with which it deals [and] should aim to protect and promote” (ibid.:6) regardless of “religion, race, color, or gender” (ibid.:4) such dignity both “at home and in international interactions” (ibid.:6). Fundamentally, every human being is perceived of as “the same as ‘others’ and ‘others’ are the same as ‘I’” since “huma nity is like a single body whose organs are human beings” (ibid.:6)10. Since all human beings are

9 The Twelfth Imam (Mahdi) disappeared in the 9th century and is according to Twelver Shi’a beliefs to return to

establish everlasting peace and justice in the world, hand in hand with the Prince of Peace (Jesus), conditioned and contingent (‘insofar the truth’) upon the conduct of humanity (‘the people themselves make him come back’).

10 Alikhani here refers to “the Qur’anic verse which says that killing a single human being is tantamoun t to killing

all people” (2012:6). This is also the central point of Sa’adi’s poem often referred to by Iranian politicians, which in Dabashi’s translation reads: “The children of Adam, are limbs of but one body, Having been created of but one essence. When the calamity of time afflicts one limb, The other limbs will not remain at ease. If t hou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others, Thou art unworthy to be named human” (2012:5f).

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endowed with dignity, it follows that “all religions, thoughts, and attitudes should be respected in political and international relations” and that it “is necessary to guarantee security and the political and social rights of all people” (ibid.:20). The world envisioned can only be realised if every human being ascribes to and acts in accordance with adab, adl, ihsan and jihad, i.e. coming to peace with one self, society and the world, and in the process accepting differe nce and diversity as a condition of existence.

To conclude, in the discourse and practices of IRI’s foreign policy, central statements and the enunciative fields may be defined as resistance, oppression, independence, sovereignt y, colonial imperialism, hegemony, security, dialogue, dignity, negation of violence, truthfulness and realistic approach. These are all loci of a number of discourses from adjacent fields which allows us to read historical and religious experiences and doctrines’ relevance in contemporary Iranian foreign policy. The statements form the collateral space—i.e. IRI’s foreign policy— through which IRI claims the right to be different. IRI’s reading of Islamic fundame nt a l principles regulating international relations, including war, contradicts colonial and imperia l practices, as these aim at creating a condition in which all adhere to the same norms despite cultural, religious and historical differences—what Dabashi has termed universalised provincialism (2015). Importantly, IRI claims the right to be non-western with a combatative fervour (Bigonah 2017).

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Surveying the field: On Iranian Foreign Policy

The quest for independence and freedom and their progressive meta -morphosis into major ideals and then principles in the Iranian world view are as old as the Iranian state, founded by Cyrus (558–530 BC). […] it stretched from the Nile and the Aegean to the Indus and from the deserts of Africa to the ice-bound borders of China. Demographically, it represented ‘the first deliberate attempt in history’ to unite heterogeneous peoples from all these territories into a single organized international society, which, we are told by Adda B. Bozeman, the renowned international historian, ‘constituted, an important precedent in the history of international peace and organization’. Furthermore, she tells us that the earliest Persian statesmen posed ‘for the first time in historically human terms the problems of moral principle in international relations’. (Ramazani 2008:2)

This chapter introduces current research on Iran and the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic , discussing different scholarly approaches to the understanding of IRI’s political manoeuvres in the field of foreign policy. In doing so, the chapter draws on political science as well as historical research, in a bid to define a particular discursive formation in which Iran’s foreign policy as phenomenon has developed qualities making it a collateral space to be studied as such. Following the logic prescribed by Morgenthau (1993)—the importance of history in international relations and foreign policy of individual units—this chapter will be organised around a historical reading of Iran, also as a state formation of central importance to the regions of which it is part, currently and historically, against which contemporary research will be positioned in the collateral space under study—foreign policy. Hence, apart from a review of relevant research on IRI’s foreign policy, the chapter provides the reader with a historic a l background giving contextual basis for the understanding of the forthcoming analysis, as well as outlining the system of dispersion with concomitant veridifications constructing IRI in highly particularised ways. The themes around which this survey of the field is focused are derived from the literature: military power, dominance and security in a resource rich region (e.g. Helfont 2009, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Frankopan 2015, Brzezinski 2016, Cohen 2018, Modebadze 2018, Elling 2019), which has for centuries been at the cross airs of imperia l designs (Nordberg 1979, Dabashi 2007, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Frankopan 2015, Blumi 2018).

Since the design of this thesis is discourse analysis, it follows that what ensues below is a survey of the field in the form of an analytical discussion of scientific literature relevant for this study. Hence, it is not a pure description of research, but a critical discussion of it.

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Military power and regional dominance

Leverett and Leverett (2013a:10) argue that in academic research (and journalism alike) “accuracy is ‘a luxury’ when Iran is concerned”, and as a norm, researchers draw “on virtua lly no Iranian sources” resulting in a considerable body of research driving a mythologic a l construct of Iran and IRI’s foreign policy, with actual and dangerous consequences in terms of policy analysis on which decision-making is founded (Mintz and DeRouen 2010).

A substantial amount of the literature on IRI’s foreign policy revolves around a reading of its foreign policy objectives as geared towards a bid for regional dominance or even hegemony (McLachlan 1992, Berman 2004, Podhoretz 2008, Rahigh-Aghsan & Jakobsen 2010, Jönsson 2011, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Chubin 2014, Stavridis 2015, Cohen 2018, Modebadze 2018). Theoretically, one of the foundational key stones of hegemony is the ability to project military power offensively (i.e. threat of militarily unprovoked attack) as an instrument in reaching foreign political objectives of dominance (Mearsheimer 2014, Pashakhanlou 2017). Hegemony, or dominance thence requires military capabilities far beyond those controlled by IRI (Ward 2005, Rahigh-Aghsan & Jakobsen 2010, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013, Chubin 2014, Czulda 2016, Olson 2016); Iran’s regional military activities are carried out by asymmetrical means in cooperation with regional state and non-state actors (Ward 2005, Chubin 2014, Leverett and Leverett 2013, Czulda 2016). Typically, asymmetric militar y activities are a consequence of the lack of the ability to dominate through military capabilit ies (Ward 2005, Czulda 2016), as asymmetric warfare is an instrument in the absence of symmetrical conventional means. Hence, the literature on Iran’s foreign policy as aspiring for dominance or hegemony is conspicuously unclear on this point: it cannot be theoretica lly sustained, and it is based on numbers, which in no way can strengthen the argument of dominance or hegemonic aspirations concerning Iran. Consulting the statistics rather shows that many of Iran’s neighbours seem to be building such capacities and that Iran tends to invest militarily as a direct response to sharply increased insecurity, unrest and war in the region11, in contrast to many neighbouring states which are not under apparent threat, or have not experienced invasion or threat of such12 (see SIPRI’s MILEX compilation by year). Its militar y spending is also considerably lower than in the 1970’s when Iran under the Pahlavi did develop hegemonic aspirations, in effect bandwaggoning with the USA (Leverett and Leverett 2013a,

11 Such as during the war years, with a sharp decline from 1989 to 1990 and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. 12 In the region, only Iraq, Bahrein and Turkey follow the same pattern as Iran.

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Alavandi 2014)13. The focus on IRI as an aspiring hegemon might in part be related to the knowledge of Iran’s defences during the Shah’s last years in power. Under his reign the US had access to the defence posture of Iran, while since 1979 all analyses and research have had to be pieced together from whatever information become available, as IRI for security reasons never shares or publicly publishes its defence posture (Czulda 2016).

Another reason however, might have to do more with colonial imperial history than Iran’s behaviour as such. Contemporary historians (e.g. Frankopan 2015, Blumi 2018, Bell 2017, Alahmad 2017) maintain that the Great Game following European colonial imperia l domination of Asia, starting in early 19th century European colonial practices and the imperia l struggles for regional hegemony, is in fact still unfolding in the wider WANA region and Central Asia, a reading of the current political and military practices in the region which was corroborated by the late Brzezinski in 2016.

The logic derived from the Great Game is focused on the strategic control of land, resources and maritime pathways, regional politics and populations in order to deprive other players in the game of reaching their hegemonic interests in zero-sum competition. Implicit to the Great Game is the absolutist reading of players as being only the European super-powers of the day, later including the USA, and the regional entities as pawns on the great Asian and North African chess board. The continuous logic received from the Great Game generates the notion of a constant push and pull by foreign backed regional actors to attain the geo-politic a l outcomes prescribed by the Great Game, such as Saudi Arabia versus Iran, Sunni versus Shia, and the outgrowth of a so-called Shia Crescent14, stretching from western Central Asia to Lebanon, instilling the imagery of the rise of past Persian Empires (see e.g. Nordberg 1979, Terhalle 2007, Proctor 2008, Helfont 2009, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Çakmak 2015, Frankopan 2016, Stavridis 2015, Uzun and Ekşi 2017, Hiro 2018, Modebadze 2019, May 2019). The political practices of the Great Game influenced IR theory on hegemony, which in turn influences political practices of today, from the construction of extra-regional powers’ military bases in the region, to the very conceptualisation of it, such as the coining of the term ‘Middle East’. This concept defines a geo-political space directly reflecting the conceptual

13 IRI’s spending hit an all-time low in 1993, 1.7 per cent of GDP, and an all-time high in 1981—8,2 per cent of

GDP—while spending between 1994 and 2019 oscillates between 2.1 and 3.1 per cent (SIRPI MILEX 2019). In comparison, spending oscillated between 10.2 and 12.1 per cent in the years preceding the revolution.

14 Claimed as such by Jordan’s King Abdullah, reverberating throughout western mass -media and academic

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influence and power imperial practices have had on conventional as well as academic thinking and framing of the region, as “The term was first coined in 1902 by an American navy captain, Alfred Thayer Mahan, who referred to the Persian Gulf as the ‘Middle East’—a region that Britain had to secure if it wanted to protect the paths that link the Suez Canal to India” (Alahmad 2017:111). The continuous interference and invasions in the WANA region by European powers and the USA in league with regional and local interests, reflect the uninterrupted on-going interests in controlling, managing and securitizing the area between the Suez and India (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Dabashi 2015 and 2016, Frankopan 2015). Thus, the logic of the Great Game is a valid point of departure for understanding and analysing the foreign policy of WANA units and extra-territorial geo-political players. It is however, not per automatique a logic inherited by each and every contemporary state in the region. The theoretical conclusion, based on the Great Game logics, of one-rule-fits-all may be true for the young, post-Ottoman state formations constructed on the colonially determined nation-state rationality (Lapidus 2014). It is however not suitable for Iran, which is in contrast one of the oldest, still existing state formations in the world, with an unbroken institutional memory stretching back at least to Elamite times, i.e. approximately 4500 years (Summerer 2007, Dzhavakhishvili 2007, Alizadeh 2008, Yanli and Yuhong 2017).

IRI’s military posture is developed from the notion of Non-Offensive Defence (NOD)15, in which defence and regional security are intertwined (Pirseyedi 2013, Czulda 2016) in the notion of security networking and Confidence Building Measures, i.e. CBM’s (Zarif 2007, 2018a, 2018b). In line with this posture, Iranian military officials are adamant in asserting Iran’s defensive military capabilities as powerful enough to defend the territorial integrit y of Iran; deflect terrorism and external interference; and deter enemies from the idea of invading Iran (FAS 2012 and 201416, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Chubin 2014, Rezaee.ir 2016, Javid 2017, 2019a, 2019b).

15 Discussed in particular by a small group of Scandinavian peace scholars (e.g. Agrell 1987, Møller 1988 and

1996) in the 1980s and -90s.

16 US Department of Defense reports on IRI’s defensive capabilities corroborates that Iran’s security strategy

“remains focused on deterring an attack” while its military doctrine is designed to “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities” (FAS 2012:1), and seeks to “improve its deterrent capabilities ” (FAS 2014:1). It is interesting to note

that the DoD’s reports reflect the opacity found in the research on IRI’s foreign policy, defining it as seeking to “establish Iran as a dominant regional power” (ibid.) and through defensive deterrence and diplomacy “secure itself from both external and internal threats” and thereby “emerge as a dominant regional power” (FAS 2016:1). This illustrates the incoherency of reasoning in the assessment of IRI’s security interests, discussed also by Leverett and Leverett (2013a).

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Iranian defence policy is rooted in historical experiences, stretching from the Achaemenid to the late modern period, such as the Iraq-Iran war. This experience may be translated into the following realisation: for security reasons it is important to ‘own’ your defensive capabilit ies (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013, Czulda 2016), i.e. being independent of foreign supplied hard-ware, military capabilities and know-how. While there are numerous historic a l experiences, from the Samanid to the Buyid dynasties, who relied on contracted, foreign warriors for their military, late colonial experiences of Euro-American imperialism are perceived as similar. The historical dynasties mentioned above, were eventually over-thrown, due to their over-reliance on contracted military forces, which eventually turned on their contractors, in some cases establishing their own empires, e.g. the Seljuqs (Bosworth 1965/1966, Nordberg 1979, Noori 2019).

On the other hand, the demise of enduring Iranian state formations such as the Sassanid empire exemplify the aftershock of over-militarisation, i.e. constant military campaigns. This is most notable during the late-Sassanid era’s protracted military conflicts with East Rome, leading to internal divisions (Pourshariati 2008) and the subsequent collapse of the Sassanian world at the hands of the invading Islamic forces (Pourshariati 2008, Lapidus 2014, Frankopan 2015). Similarly, the extremely destructive and expansive military campaigns of Nader Shah in the mid-18th century, paved the way for both the fall of the Moghul Empire, the colonisation of India, the commencement of the era of the Great Game in Asia, and the invasion and semi-colonisation by European imperial powers of Iran under the Qajar dynasty (Nordberg 1979, Dabashi 2007, Farrokh 2011). While Iran has not invaded any other state in nearly two centuries, defensive capabilities have turned out to be central (Farrokh 2011). In other words, Iranian experiences show, that constant warfare leads to internal security deficits and loss of imperial (or state) cohesion, and ultimately risk of invasion.

Readings of Great Game Logics

According to Leverett and Leverett (2013a and 2013b), the USA embarked on a policy of dominance in the WANA region in the 1990s, following the first Gulf War, based on the assumption that hegemony could be asserted, while Frankopan (2015:456) argues that the superpower rivalries of the Cold War era ushered in “the latest version of the Great Game in Asia”, from which follows several Great Games: for the geopolitical “competition for influence, for energy and natural resources, for food, water and clean air, for strategic position, even for data” (Frankopan 2018:19). Theoretically, the politics of the Great Game may be translated to a set of concepts describing the agenda of particular actors in regions of

References

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