Understanding Iran’s Foreign Policy: An Application of Holistic Constructivism

Year 2010, Volume: 9 Issue: 1, 148 - 180, 16.02.2010

Mahdi Mohammad Nia

Abstract

This article seeks to explain why Iranian foreign policy toward the western countries in
general and The United States in particular even under the systemic pressures has remained
relatively unchanged. To this end, the present article identifies the determinant factors affect
Iranian foreign policy. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian foreign and security policy
has been dominated by a new set of revolutionary values and discourses. The author believes
that the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran mostly is driven by its revolutionary
values and ideological perspectives than the logic of nation states. To understand Iranian
foreign behavior, one should try to understand the basic characteristics of the country’s
normative and discursive structures. Hence, this article argues that due to the role of
normative factors in constructing Iranian foreign policy, the Holistic constructivist approach
is considered the most applicable theory for explaining the country’s foreign policy.

Key words: constructivism, holistic constructivism, identity, social discourses, foreign
policy.

Keywords

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