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Iran: Security Policy Post-Saddam

A part of The Middle East Journal Resource Series

The Middle East Journal Resource Series offers compilations of Journal articles related to topics of interest in digital format.

Iran: Security Policy Post-Saddam is on sale for $20 and contains articles that can not be found in digital format elsewhere. You may purchase CDs from The Middle East Journal Resource Series at the Middle East Institute's front desk or by contacting Lisa Barr at (202) 785-1141 ext. 200 or members@mideasti.org

Iran: Security Policy Post-Saddam contains the following six Journal articles and provides scholarly and in-depth background to the present security environment in Iran:

Good for the Shah, Banned for the Mullahs: The West and Iran's Quest for Nuclear Power
Mustafa Kibaroglu (Spring 2006)

Iran’s nuclear program has become a highly controversial issue in international politics since the August 2002 unveiling of the secretly built uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and the heavy-water production plant in Arak. American officials and experts assert that Iran has secret plans to use its nuclear capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian officials, however, deny such allegations and claim that they will use their capabilities exclusively for peaceful purposes. Notwithstanding the official rhetoric, some Iranian scholars, intellectuals, and even bureaucrats argue that Iran should seriously consider developing nuclear weapons given that they have the necessary skills and capabilities as well as the reasons to do so. The clerical leaders have supposedly not yet decided about weaponizing Iran’s nuclear capability. However, the ever-increasing size of Iran’s existing nuclear infrastructure, and the achievements of Iranian scientists, who claim to have developed indigenous capabilities, may very well elevate Iran to the status of a nuclear power, even a de facto nuclear-weapons state.

Iran's Policy Towards Afghanistan
Mohsen Milani (Spring 2006)

Since 1979, Iran’s objectives in Afghanistan have changed as Afghanistan’s domestic landscape changed. Still, Iran has consistently sought to see a stable and independent Afghanistan, with Herat as a buffer zone and with a Tehran-friendly government in Kabul, a government that reflects the rich ethnic diversity of the country. Toward those and other goals, Iran has created “spheres of influence” inside Afghanistan. During the Soviet occupation (1979-88), Iran created an “ideological sphere of influence” by empowering the Shi‘ites. Iran then created a “political sphere of influence” by unifying the Dari/Persian-speaking minorities, who ascended to power. Iranian policies added fuel to the ferocious civil war in the 1990s. Astonishingly slow to recognize the threat posed by the Taliban, Iran helped create a “sphere of resistance” to counter the “Kabul-Islamabad-Riyadh” axis by supporting the Northern Alliance. Since the liberation of Afghanistan, Iran has also established an “economic sphere of influence” by engaging in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Today, Iran’s goals are to pressure the Afghan government to distance itself from Washington, and for Iran to become the hub for the transit of goods and services between the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, Central Asia, India, and China. While Iran has been guilty of extremism and adventurism in some critical aspects of its foreign policy, its overall Afghan policy has contributed more to moderation and stability than to extremism and instability.

The Continuing Evolution of Iran's Military Doctrine
Steven R. Ward (Autumn 2005)

Iran’s military has tried to develop concepts for warfighting suitable for deterring the United States while dealing with a complex security environment and numerous constraints on its military power. The military’s key task has been to align doctrine with service capabilities. This article examines the path of Iran’s doctrinal developments and highlights the advantages and problems in Iran’s approach and its seeming over-reliance on missile-based deterrence and the threat of unconventional and proxy war.

No One Will Scratch My Back: Iranian Security Perceptions in Historical Context
Fabiroz Mokhtari (Spring 2005)

Iranians support a policy of deterrence because their perception of Iran’s security is colored by historical experiences. For Iranians, geopolitical realities together with national psychology define national security. This article attempts to explain the national psychology, and in doing so point to a path of US-Iranian policy convergence. The United States should avoid making the mistake Britain made in 1951, making an oil royalty issue a matter of national pride for Iranians. The current nuclear dispute could turn into an object of Iranian national pride, liberty, and independence. The question whether a nation without access to a nuclear fuel cycle could be anything other than a dependent consumer, has already been posed.

Ideology and Pragmatism in Iran's Foreign Policy
R.K. Ramazani (Autumn 2004)

This essay hypothesizes that the tension between religious ideology and pragmatism has persisted throughout Iranian history. The Iranian Revolution simply put it on graphic display in the contemporary period. The essay also suggests that the dynamic processes of cultural maturation seem to be shifting the balance of influence increasingly away from religious ideology toward pragmatic calculation of the national interest in the making and implementation of foreign policy decisions. The obvious implications of all this for US-Iran relations are mentioned.

Iran's International Posture After the Fall of Baghdad
Anoushiravan Ehteshami (Spring 2004)

Iran’s interwoven and complex domestic political structures should be set against an equally complex, dynamic, and unstable regional system, if one is to understand fully the relationship between the domestic and regional forces governing Iran’s foreign policy-making. These matters are addressed in this article in the context of the new regional realities created by the fall of the Iraqi regime in April 2003.