THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF 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 Date of Submission: August 15, 2019 Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 military 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 legitimacy 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 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, translating 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 foundational 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 theological, 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 acculturation.

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

The experiences of this, and the residual cultural, political and economic effects of colonial 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

Table of Content

Introduction ...... 7

Problem statement ...... 7

Puzzle, objectives and research question ...... 7

Contextualisation...... 8

Delimitations...... 10

Outline of the thesis ...... 11

Methodological considerations and analytical framework ...... 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

The pulse of the beating heart ...... 58

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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

Appendix 2: List of speeches ...... 126

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 initiative, 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis military and economic capacities. It seems puzzling then, that Iran, despite lacking the military 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 imperially 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 deployment (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, and , the cold war tensions and sporadic clashes between and , and chronic instability in the Sistan-Baluchistan region, shared with . 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 compliance 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 military 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 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 innumerable 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 revolution 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. 9

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 of 1978- 79, consolidating its inconclusive pre-war status, while internationally becoming an undeniable factor through its territorial defence, and unrelenting and unabated anti-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 participatory 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 exclusively 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 throughout.

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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 dispersed 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 Political 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 interpretive 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 contingencies (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 analysis 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 ultimate state. According to Foucault, this kind of historical knowledge is only “the final result of a long

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 formal 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 archaeologically uncovered systems of thought. In essence, discourse analysis implies a process of de- construction of meaning, followed by a re-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; documentation from negotiations and procedures manifesting actions (Klotz and Lynch 2007). Additionally, 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

2 Veridifications: discourses of power taken for granted. 14

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 officials 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 literature 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 (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 delegation and CIA between the early 1990’s and 2003. 15

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 foundational 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 (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. 16

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 elements 5 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 Imams 6. 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 political particularities (Bausani 1975, Mottahedeh 2009, Dabashi 2011, Elling 2019).

5 Words and conceptualisations linked to statements. 6 In Twelver Shi’a , there are only 12 (infallible) Imams, all descended from the Prophet Mohammad, the last of whom disappeared in the 9th century, also referred to as the Imam of Time. 17

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 tyrannical order to become real-life resistance even to death as “the ordinary lives of […] revolutionary 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 what 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 political 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

In IRI political discourse the figure of Yazid has transfigured, over time from the Shah and , 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 political 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 quintessential prescriptive moral and political duty to resist what is conceived of as oppressive and tyrannical 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 international 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 imperialism 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 symbolic 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’). 19

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 Government (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 transfiguring

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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-imperialist and revolutionary figures (e.g. Shari’ati 1979, Dabashi 2011) such as Khomeini himself. 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 fundamentals 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 “humanity 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 tantamount 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 thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others, Thou art unworthy to be named human” (2012:5f). 21

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 difference 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, sovereignty, 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 fundamental principles regulating international relations, including war, contradicts colonial and imperial 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 . 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 historical 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 imperial 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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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 virtually no Iranian sources” resulting in a considerable body of research driving a mythological 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 military activities are a consequence of the lack of the ability to dominate through military capabilities (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 theoretically 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 military 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 follow the same pattern as Iran. 24

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 imperial domination of Asia, starting in early 19th century European colonial practices and the imperial 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-political outcomes prescribed by the Great Game, such as 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 literature alike. A duckduckgo search on ‘shia crescent’ is instructive. 25

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis 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 integrity 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). 26

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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 capabilities (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 historical 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 (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 geo-

27

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis strategical importance, with a focus on hegemonic control as the most desirable outcome of any given stratagem—in short, zero-sum gaming. This emanates to what one might define as theoretical Great Game logics, prevalent in much of the research on IRI’s foreign policy and behaviour. According to this logic any actor with a potential to achieve a hegemonic position and establish a regional equilibrium, will endeavour to do so (Morgenthau 1993). In such a scenario external powers will attempt to ally themselves with, or even control, regional powers. Consequentially, IRI’s foreign policy is read as a strive for hegemony, dominance and maximisation of power output in terms of zero-sum objectives, but dangerous because of its independence from any external power (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Elling 2019). IRI’s regional propositions, cooperation, invitations, political and military support for particular actors are therefore often read as a bid for regional dominance or hegemony, without taking into account what IRI actually says and does as research seldom leans on primary sources, and when it does, these are limited, and interpreted as untrustworthy (e.g. McLachlan 1992, Berman 2004, Podhoretz 2008, Helfont 2009, Behravesh 2014, 2018, Cohen 2018, Hiro 2018, Modebadze 2018).

Iran by its very nature—demographically, geographically and culturally—is a de-facto regional power (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Frankopan 2015). However, concerning Iran, the animated assertion of power as equalling the strive for hegemonic dominance originating in the Great Game logic, is problematic for a number of reasons.

Firstly, this logic is derived from a fundamentally colonial and liberal imperial outlook, in which the West is perceived of as the singular model of political rationality (Bell 2017). Dabashi refers to this as universalised provincialism (2015), and maintains that

‘The West’ is the Hegelian end of history. Whatever came before this ‘West’ were the infantile stages of this dialectical unfolding of the Hegelian Geist. ‘The West’ is not just a world, it is the world. It is not just a particular rendition of an imperial map of the world in which we now live—but the very meaning and destination of History. (Dabashi 2019:23) Consequentially then, and as a case in point, the debate on Iran “has been dominated by uniformed and agenda driven views that have hardened into a powerful mythology about the Islamic Republic [and] its foreign policy” (Leverett and Leverett 2013a:8), and the policy approach towards it. This archetypical approach to non-Western states, and Iran in particular, foments a virtual reality on which decisions are made with disastrous consequences (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen). The political, historical, cultural and economic experiences of non-Western entities is thereby made irrelevant and erased from both research and decision-making, based on pre-conceived theoretical superstructures believed to pertain to

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis all actors, e.g. the Great Game logic and the more modern concept of hegemony. When a state does not behave as expected and prescribed by Great Game oriented political theory, research tends to display signs of cognitive dissonance and logical incoherence, with phantasmatic conclusions about the nature of IRI, e.g. as a cause, which needs to act like a normal state (exemplified in Leverett and Leverett 2013a), or absurdisms such as Cohen’s (2018:13 emphasis in original) claim that IRI’s “survival strategy […] is very similar to Nazi-Germany’s concept of ‘lebensraum’”.

Secondly, the Great Game logic maintains a Hobbesian rationality prescribing domination, and ultimately hegemony, as the main driving force behind the application of state power in international relations (Morgenthau 1993, Pashakhanlou 2017). However, a quick survey of the history of Iran in its wider region suggests that such a reading is unfounded since no single historical episode has resulted in a singular power being able to wield hegemonic power in West and Central Asia (Dabashi 2011, 2012, Lapidus 2014, Frankopan 2015). Attempts at such designs have always resulted in backlashes, popular revolts and fragmentation leading to multipolar environments (ibid.). An obvious example being the unfolding events of early Islamic history, the politico-religious splits in the Islamic community and subsequent Abbasid revolt against Umayyad hegemonic tendencies (Dabashi 2011, Lapidus 2014), resulting in a number of new powerful religious and political entities from the border of today’s France, across North Africa to Central Asia (Nordberg 1979, Dabashi 2011, 2012, Lapidus 2014, Frankopan 2015).

Thirdly, and in contrast to the above, one might argue that the most enduring Persian and later also Ottoman empires in these regions (covering North Africa, West, Central and South Asia and large parts of East and Central Europe), were based on negotiated power-sharing principles rather than hegemonic dominance (Nordberg 1979, Pourshariati 2008, Vlassopoulos 2013, Dahlén 2014, 2016, Bahadori 2017). Concerning the Persianate areas, one might refer to the pre-Islamic satrapies under the ShahanShah system of shared rule, and the absence of hegemonic cultural and religious imposition of the central (imperial) government upon the respective regional governments (ibid.)—a system, which in a sense survived into modernity (including the Pahlavi self-imagery, Abrahamian 2008 and Elling 2019). In this system of rule, governmental legitimacy resided in the King (i.e. government) only to the extent that this function upheld the social contract including the institutional redistribution of wealth, up- holding of justice, territorial integrity, cultural diversity and religious harmony (Ferdowsi 2016 [orig. ca. 1010], Nordberg 1979, Lorentz 2007, Savant 2008, Pourshariati 2008, Frankopan

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

2015, Dahlén 2016). Conversely, revolts such as the communalist Mazdak movement (6th century CE), explicate the internal instability of the system, which is sensitive to violations of the social contract between the centre and the provinces, or the concentration of power and resources to a single node within the ruling strata (Lorentz 2007, Savant 2008, Mottahedeh 2009, Dabashi 2019). While the concept of ShahanShah falls out of usage with the fall of the Sassanids only to re-appear with the 20th century , the idea of the state as the nexus of negotiated redistributive power and guarantor of territorial integrity and sovereignty has survived. The ’s most outstanding feature is indeed its negotiation- based power as basis for systems of rule with either internal Iranian nodes of power or external actors, in which the cultural and military imposition of the centre was absent in exchange for political consensus based on taxation and the logic of poly-cultural existence as the imperial modus operandi (Nordberg 1979, Ramazani 2008, Vlassopoulos 2013, Dahlén 2016, Bahadori 2017). It is noteworthy that the most enduring Islamic (theocratic) Iranian state formation— the Safavids—during its time of stability was modelled on a similar system of shared power between the monarchy, the ulama, the market and the general populace (Keddie 1969, Moussavi 2004 Grigoriadis 2013, Sani 2013, Moazzen 2016). Conversely, the demise of the Safavid state is associated with a system of absolutism and internal hegemony, resulting in revolt, fragmentation and the subsequent short-lived, expansive, militaristic absolutism under Nader Shah (Nordberg 1979, Dabashi 2011, Bigonah 2017). One might argue that the current system of rule in IRI has democratised the ShahanShah system in the sense that instead of negotiating rule with the provinces, the governing strata and the government itself relies on velayat-e faqhi: theocratically guided popular representation, through a constitution and an electoral system with a neo-Platonian flair—the people becomes the power base of the state in an Islamic representative, participatory political system (Abrahamian 2008, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, 2013b). In essence, these political mechanisms of power-sharing (from the ShahanShah to the participatory system) have served the cultural and political longevity of Iran despite the numerous historical calamities inflicting seismic change as Greek, Arab, Turkish, Mongol and European powers have all left political and cultural imprints on Iran (Bausani 1975, Dabashi 2007). However, and these invasions notwithstanding, no single power has historically been able to dominate West Asia in hegemonic terms, neither through military nor political means.

Lastly, when researchers depart from the primary sources available, whether being positioned at “ringside seats” of US decision-making processes, as Leverett and Leverett did

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(2013b:02.37), or through meticulously excavated data on negotiations in international decision-making processes and fora, such as the work by Pirseyedi (2013), the conclusions drawn are the opposite of the Great Game logics of a bid for hegemony and domination as the modus operandi of IRI’s foreign policy. Rather, these researchers contend that Iranian foreign policy, apart from being anti-imperialistic and thus anti-hegemonic, is geared toward establishing a balanced regional system in which there are no hegemonic actors (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013). Instead, IRI prefers sovereign and independent state actors rooted in participatory political systems, independent of extra-regional actors in their foreign policy, which in turn would guarantee Iran’s regional security needs (Zarif 2007, 2014, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, 2013b). IRI’s explicit security needs are conflict de-escalation, de-militarisation through the establishment of an indigenous regional security architecture, independence from imperial powers, and participatory political systems granting (internal) political stability in the region (ibid.).

De-escalation has been a focus of Iranian regional politics since the 1980s and is obtained through dialogue and transparency, such as the suggested CBM, e.g. including information sharing, reciprocal inspections of security installations and military sites, and regular high-level bi-and multilateral meetings (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013). De-militarisation is a long-standing demand from IRI, which is tied to the suggested cooperative regional security order (ibid.), which by definition would entail the withdrawal of extra-regional military forces, as well as general disarmament. In essence, a regional security architecture managed by the regional actors without the imposition of external interests (Zarif 2007, 2014, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013).

Participatory political systems across the regions of which Iran is part has been on IRI’s agenda since its inception, and is seen as central to internal stability and by extension independence from external interference, within the single units as well as to the regions of West, Central and South Asia. Leverett and Leverett (2013a) explains Iranian understandings of participatory political systems as grounded in constitutionally based systems of power sharing between representative interest groups with non-hegemonic aspirations, and highly dependent on the internal particularities of each unit, be it based on ethnic formations such as in Afghanistan; political inclinations as in Yemen and Tunisia; religious as in Lebanon; mixed economic, ethnic and religious formations in Iraq; or a mix of political inclination, religious and economic formations as in Iran (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Blumi 2018).

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

When the internal make-up of regional units is based on a participatory power sharing system, IRI believes that each unit will be more interested in the needs of their own populations, thus making them more inclined towards forming policies focused on satisfying internal demands for development, rather than external interests in regional resources, and hence with independent foreign policies as a consequence (Leverett and Leverett 2013a). In other words, when combined with CBM and security networking, i.e. economic, political, cultural and defence cooperation (Pirseyedi 2013), this will guarantee regional independence from external powers attempting to impose their versions of hegemonic security on these regions.

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

A reading of the Constitution

When the IRI came into being […] it changed Iran’s foreign policy orientation and openly questioned and challenged what it viewed as inequality and unjust power relations in international politics. Born in the middle of the Cold War international system, the IRI actively presented itself and its ideological tenets—composed of a mixture of Islamic, third- worldist, leftist, and nationalistic beliefs—as an alternative, an independent force in the world dominated by the superpowers and divided into their respective spheres of influence. (Pirseyedi 2013:164).

Since 1978-79 Iran has experienced a revolution, spurring the change from absolutist monarchic rule to theocracy; an invasion by a neighbouring country and subsequent eight-year war; the passing of the first Spiritual Leader; and the post-war reconstruction under President Rafsanjani. Under these circumstances and the leadership of subsequent presidents, and the second Spiritual Leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Iran has developed a distinct foreign policy discourse legally based in its constitution; the concern of this chapter. With the revolution, amendments to the 1906 constitution was negotiated and adopted, reflecting the multifaceted political landscape underpinning it.

With the establishment of IRI in 1979, the constitution of Iran is supplemented with a chapter on foreign policy (articles 152-155). In addition, foreign political considerations are also added to the preamble. These changes to the 1906 constitution give the revolutionary constitution a distinct foreign policy flavour of global relevance17, setting the frames for IRI’s conduct of its foreign relations.

A profoundly Islamic state There are two notes of importance to remember when discussing IRI’s post-revolution foreign policy. The first is to keep in mind that Iran is a declared Muslim country and that Twelver Shi’a Islam is an integral part of the modern Iranian state system. This is a continuous feature since the Safavid state, ca. 1500 to 1740 (Nordberg 1984), and confirmed in the Iranian 1906

17 In 1981, Mousavi stated that the key to “understanding […] the foreign policy of Iran lies in the comprehension of the motives behind the unusual resistance and sacrifices of our people and that this understanding may lay the foundation of a series of new relationships based on the respect for the independence of the oppressed countries and for their sovereignty” (A/36/PV.26[1981]).

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis constitution’s amendment of 1907 (Persian Constitution of 1906), stating that “the official religion of Persia is Islám, according to the orthodox Já’fari doctrine of the Ithna ‘Ashariyya” (The Supplementary Fundamental Laws, General Dispositions, Article 1). The implications of this is explained in Article 2: §1 and 2 lay down the orthodoxy of Twelver Shi’ism to the state of Persia and the implicit responsibility of the state to act as guardians of justice and truth while awaiting the return of the Twelfth Imam; and §3 in which the ulama, named by the constitution “doctors of theology” are called upon to “determine whether […] laws […] proposed are or are not conformable to the principles of Islam”. Thus, the paragraph empowers the ulama to “reject and repudiate, wholly or in part, any such proposal which is at variance with the sacred laws of Islam, so it shall not obtain the title of legality”. In other words, the constitutional position of the ulama in Iran has been central to the political and hence judicial edifice since 1907 and was therefore constitutionally nothing new in 1979. Essentially, the constitutional revolution of 1905-11 was indeed to a large extent a reaction to foreign imperialist meddling in the affairs of Iran (Keddie 2006, Dabashi 2007, Abrahamian 2008, Mottahedeh 2009, Elling 2019).

The second, is to remember that the irritation with foreign meddling in Iranian politics was renewed as the first democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was toppled in 1953 by an imperially engineered (MI6 and CIA) coup d’état reinstating monarchic rule (ibid.). The frustrations with the secondary position with which Iran was engaged by the USA and Great Britain, as well as the very idea that Iran can be controlled from the outside were also expressed by the re-instated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi18 and Queen Farah Diba19 (ManotoTV 2015). While the Shah wanted an Iranian driven west-modernisation, the opposition was divided between communist, social democrat, liberal, nationalist and religiously framed political discourses, all subscribing more or less to worldist and anti- imperialist discourses, perhaps most effectively boiled down to the 1960s concept of westoxication. In later statements by the Shah’s former minister of foreign affairs, (2018) this irritation is expressed in the support of the current government’s stance on foreign relations.

18 As such, the sovereign, while having been the one to invite foreign interests in his bid to retake the throne after the first democratic elections in 1953, was siding with those who criticised him for having done so, but on different grounds. 19 E.g. as stated by the former Queen in 2015: “I myself said that throughout its history, our country has been subject to attacks by foreign powers over thousands of years, but that the people of Iran have always fought back, so that culture and civilization and our history will always win. To this day, I believe this” (ManotoTV 2015:43:16-43:36). 34

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

Constitutional amendments According to the amended constitution of IRI, the revolution “cleansed [Iran] from foreign ideological influence” (Preamble, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran), catering directly to revolutionary concerns about cultural, political and economic subservience to what is defined as “World Imperialism” (ibid.). Such worries had been discussed among oppositional intellectuals, ulama and politicians in the decades preceding the revolution, and was expressed in concepts such as Al-e Ahmad’s 1960s anthropological diagnosis of the Iranian condition as occidentosis (1984) and the popularised term westoxication more generally (Ahmad 1984, Khomeini 1986, Mottahedeh 2009, Dabashi 2011, Bakhshandeh 2014, Mahdavi 2014, Elling 2019).

These kinds of sentiments gained a specific Iranian articulation but were also grounded in a global anti-colonial and -imperial discourse typical of the global emancipatory movements of the 1960 and -70s. Similar themes can be discerned in for instance Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism and Orientalism (1994, 2003) and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1963), where issues of colonial subjugation is given primacy within the context of global political clamours for de-colonisation. In line with such ideational factors the constitution states that “Any form of agreement resulting in foreign control over the natural resources, economy, army, or culture of the country, as well as other aspects of national life, is forbidden” (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Chapter X, Article 153). By grounding constitutional principles in local experiences, similar to those in other, formerly colonised spaces, IRI catapults their particularities to a global context in which the revolution becomes a matter of importance far beyond its geopolitical boundaries:

the Iranian Revolution, which was a movement for the victory of all oppressed over the arrogant, provides a basis for the continuation of that revolution both inside and outside the country […] the continuation of the progressive struggle for the rescue of deprived and oppressed nations throughout the world […] the Constitution guarantees to oppose any kind of despotism, intellectual, social, and as regards monopoly economics, and to struggle for freedom from the despotic system, and to entrust men’s destiny to their own hands. (Preamble, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran) Consequentially, the Preamble’s framing of revolutionary Iran as a force and paragon for de- colonisation and global systemic change, is directly mirrored in the chapter on foreign policy:

The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based upon the rejection of all forms of domination, both the exertion of it and submission to it […] The Islamic Republic of Iran has as its ideal human felicity throughout society, and considers the attainment of independence, freedom and rule of justice and truth to be the right of all people of the world. (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Chapter X, Article 152 and 154)

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In practical terms, these objectives of IRI—to combat the perceived encroachment of colonial imperial power and interests on Iran itself as well as reaching out to those historically and contemporaneously subjected to such dominance—are accordingly instrumentalised in practice through “non-alignment with respect to the hegemonist superpowers, and the maintenance of mutually peaceful relations with all non-belligerent States” (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Chapter X, Article 152), as exemplified by IRI applying for membership in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) already in 1979 (Pirseyedi 2013).

The combatative foreign policy position of IRI is further manifested in its enshrinement of the principle of IRI’s understanding of state sovereignty—the inalienability of territory and the integrity of the people as the sovereign: “while scrupulously refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the just struggles of the mustad’afun against the mustakbirun in every corner of the globe” (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Chapter X, Article 154), a stance corroborated by acting foreign minister Zarif when e.g. stating that “people are the pillar of this establishment’s power […] we are nothing without people and everything with them” (Zarif quoted in TNA 2019). The support for the struggles of the oppressed (mustad’afun), in IRI’s view, does not emanate to interference in internal affairs since tyrants (mustakbirun) have exhausted their mandate of governance, allowing IRI officials to express pride (IIT 2012) in the country’s support to e.g. the African National Congress in South Africa during Apartheid (dirco.gov.za 2018), a stance reflected in e.g. Velayati’s 1983 statement that “the United Nations, having diagnosed the racist disease that is threatening the body of the world community like cancer […] should take effective measures to eradicate racial discrimination” (A/38/PV.13[1983]). After forty years, the constitution still resonates with statements such as “we take pride in the resistance of people in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. We are proud of the Palestinian resistance” (Zarif quoted in TNA 2019).

In the realm of foreign policy, the framing of the international system is modelled on the dichotomy of a world characterised by domination and oppression. The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is clearly cut from the cloth of revolutionary discourse in which a combatative predisposition is cast in a worldist theological and cosmopolitan reading of a particular ethical stance enshrined in Shi’ite mandatory opposition to oppression and abuse of power (Dabashi 2011, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Elling 2019). IRI sees diplomacy and international law as primary tools for reaching its stated constitutional objectives, among which were decolonisation and the dismantling of imperialism (Pirseyedi 2013)—a stance still at the

36

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis centre of IRI’s foreign policy conduct. Hence, “IRI believed that the restoration and defence of Iran’s political independence would necessitate, both in word and deed, a diplomatic course that would challenge the major powers” (Pirseyedi 2013:37).

Ultimately, IRI’s early analysis of global issues reached the conclusion that too much resources were funnelled into “institutions of coercion” (A/34/PV.21[1979]) rather than on essential human needs as a consequence of the proliferation of armaments to authoritarian rulers. Thus, IRI (ibid.) believed that the so-called lesser states could effectively thwart such development through a broad, concerted, multilateral engagement on multiple fronts. Iran totally rejected the ‘imperialists’ claim that arms transfer served the receiving countries’ security interests as “imperialistic game-plans”, serving only “their self-serving arms race” of the Cold War era (Pirseyedi 2013:35). The solution to the insecurity plaguing the third world, was, and still is argued to be modelled on the Iranian revolution, i.e. that such problems can “be solved only in native socio-cultural contexts” (ibid.), hence bringing the promise made in the Preamble to the Constitution to the fore of foreign policy practices: “the Iranian Revolution, […] provides a basis for the continuation of that revolution both inside and outside the country […] the continuation of the progressive struggle for the rescue of deprived and oppressed nations throughout the world”. The export of the revolution is understood as immaterial, as the “breath of the Islamic revolution” (Javid 2019a:2:47-2:49), radiated and transformed into physical manifestation through the power of conviction as an emancipatory idea, taking form in the minds of the oppressed resulting in resistance to colonial imperialism and hegemonic practices. Therefore, it cannot be eradicated since its emanation is from within (Javid 2017, 2019a, 2019b).

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

I come here from a land which is the birthplace of a more famed but less understood revolution in contemporary history, a revolution founded on the religion of God […] Islam’s unitarian weltanschauung is the unshakable foundation and the fundamental thinking of this revolution. The meaning of man, the interpretation of history, the analysis of past, present and future events, the concept of the material world, the explanation of elements that bind man to the world outside him, the earth, human beings and objects, man’s understanding of his own existence—in short, everything that goes into the formation of human society’s value system to attain an orderly human administration—are rooted in and emanate from this divine outlook. […] Exploiting his intrinsic talents man can build the world created for him in the most beautiful ways and, flying on the two wings of faith and knowledge, rise to the highest spiritual and material peaks. Conversely, man can create a hell of oppression and corruption by going astray and wasting and perverting his God-given potential. (A/42/PV.6[1987]20

The genealogical analysis below is focused on the statements outlined in the analytical framework. Each one of the statements are part of an enunciative field, linking a number of adjacent discursive fields to one another. In other words, what will follow is the linking of statements to corresponding discursive fields, as these lean on, borrow from and exclude each other. The analysis is structured around three main discursive webs crystallised from the analysis of the data: violence; justice; and peace. Each of these consists of statements surrounded by enunciative fields, sharing and borrowing elements within these discursive webs.

The discursive web of violence is diametrically contrasted to the other discursive webs, and rotates around three statements—colonial imperialism, oppression and hegemony—which lean on one another, reinforcing the internal logic of the discursive web itself, enabling its political deployment as sharr. The second discursive web, i.e. justice (adl), revolves around the statements resistance, independence, sovereignty and security. It is tightly linked to the web of peace, the two sharing and borrowing a huge number of elements between them. Peace and the

20 Persian is a gender-neutral language, with no distinction between grammatical gender. The use of “man” in this translation of Khamenei’s speech therefore cannot correctly reflect his statement in this regard, as English does not allow for such grammatical neutrality. 38

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis statements dialogue, dignity, negation of violence, truthfulness and realistic approach forms a discursive web, firmly rooted in Islamic theology and the Qur’an. Essentially, these discursive webs form a collateral space of a resistance-based foreign political discourse in which the Karbala complex is ever re-lived.

The discursive web of violence (sharr) IRI’s reading of contemporary global relations leans on an analysis of colonial imperial power as the basis of the hegemonic tendencies at play in international relations theory and practice s, and the attempts at control of the world by a small handful of states, of which the strongest is currently the USA. According to this analysis, colonial imperialism provides the archaic mind - set which is necessary to uphold hegemonic aspirations, feeding into and reinforcing the logic and application of such power. An instructive example currently unfolding in the international news media concerns IRI’s refusal to accept the US demand for a re-negotiation of the JCPOA. The agreement was forged between the UNSC permanent members, Germany, the EU and Iran, and rests on a binding UNSC resolution (2231), negotiated on equal and respectful terms, but based on the acceptance of mutual mistrust, and on the realisation that only compromising would realise the conclusion of the deal (Parsi 2017). This was reiterated by president Rouhani in 2017: “we believe in dialogue and negotiations conducted on an equal footing and based on mutual respect” (A/72/PV.7[2017]). To IRI, the deal signifies multilateral efforts in striving for establishing and implementing transparency mechanisms that could gradually induce the parties to move towards solving other issues of security and development as well. Thus, it could be said that the JCPOA was constitutive of CBM, as practice, and based on IRI’s suggested approach to de-escalation and de-militarisation (A/41/PV.19[1986]), as well as a locally based security architecture in the Persian Gulf region (Pirseyedi 2013). When IRI now refuses re- negotiation, with the consequence of a US military escalation in the region, it might seem puzzling or even irrational not to accept direct bilateral talks.

However, for IRI such an approach equals the submission to pressure, or in terms of the constitution: allowing “foreign control over” nuclear power, which is needed both for industrialisation and general electrification, i.e. a central development asset21. In other words, the constitution defines as illegal the acceptance of another power’s control of such an asset—

21 It is interesting to note IRI’s consistent claim throughout the years, that WMD including nuclear weapons, are antithetical to their core values and hence IRI does not intend to develop such armaments. A stance also reflected by their behaviour during the war with Iraq of not retaliating in kind (Rajaee 1993, Farrokh 2011, Leverett and Leverett 2013, Pirseyedi 2013). 39

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis renegotiation would be tantamount to subjugation to a foreign power. Such attempts at foreign control of IRI—whether its “natural resources, economy, army, or culture of the country, as well as other aspects of national life” (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1979)— must necessarily be resisted. In other words, and as stated by IRI at a US called UNSC meeting on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2231 in late June 2019, “If we want our world to be governed by the rule of law, not by the rule of power, and by the force of logic, instead of the logic of force, we should not allow fabrications, disinformation as well as deception by the US to set the agenda here” (UN 2019:2:12:43-2:13:00).

The constitutional requirement has its basis in precisely those conditions, which the revolution itself was directed against: colonial imperial control of local resources, including population, culture, development, and the imposition of a monopoly of power, militaristic and economic alike. IRI’s reading of hegemonic power foregrounds colonial imperialism, thoroughly based in “archaic […] means” and a “conceptual mindset that negates peace, security, human dignity and exalted human ideals” (A/68/PV.6[2013]). Colonial imperialism feeds into and reinforces the logic of the application of hegemonic power through the sharing and borrowing of a number of central elements in the discursive web of violence discussed here, hence exposing “outdated approaches” (A/54/PV.12[1999]) to international relations as theory and practice, “indicating the failure of its holders to keep pace with history” (A/53/PV.80[1998]).

In IRI’s foreign policy discourse, the linking between colonial imperialism, hegemony and oppression may be illustrated by the enunciative fields overlapping through a handful of elements22, themselves representing discourses signifying subjection in different forms, both by imperial colonial powers, and the application of hegemonic power in a circular motion in the postcolonial world system. IRI’s analysis of instability and violence is grounded in their reading of domination as the modus operandi of powerful states, which they describe and expose constantly in their foreign political discourse. In effect, a continuation of naming-and- shaming, i.e. the requirement to speak truth to power enshrined in and constitutive of the Karbala complex. Domination is formed as an enunciative field through the connecting of elements23 such as the logic of might, unsanctioned force, utilitarian self-interest, impunity,

22 E.g. Self-interest, logic of might, unipolarity, military solutions, bipolarity, exclusion, greed, exploitation, deprivation, dispossessed, racism, plundering, occupation, polarisation, enslavement, uneven distribution of wealth, arrogance and despotism (Appendix 1). 23 Structural violence, hypocrisy, dominating, exclusion, coercion, utilitarian self-interest, consumerism, intimidation, inequitable, humiliation, diabolical goals, sinister goals, power polarities, monopoly, aggression, polarisation, logic of might, unsanctioned force, impunity, transgression, usurping, interference, irresponsible, 40

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis intimidation, arrogance, usurping, diabolical goals, exclusion, militaristic logic, the institutionalisation of violence and supremacy. Hence, leading to the conclusion that “Those seeking dominance and hegemony are enemies of peace and are the perpetrators of war” (A/73/PV.6[2018]).

These elements can all be linked to the concept of The Lie. IRI’s deployment of The Lie as a conceptual framework has been a continuous feature in Persian and later Iranian political discourse since Achaemenid times, defining the emanation of elitist driven political disorder as deceptive, manipulative and self-serving usurpation of the common good (Kent 1953, Boyce 2001, Naser & Aminrazavi 2008, Ferdowsi 2016)24. As a political and theological concept, The Lie points to the utilitarian use of strategic disorder, based on arrogance and the corruption of moral values, the application of which structurally supports aggressive, polarising, unlawful actions based on the logic of might and coercion—i.e. Yazidian politics, essentially anti- diversity, unilateral and hegemonic in its purpose. Yazid, as a representation of political power, signifies the disregard of international laws and covenants, ethical principles and moral values, based on a “logic of force, domination, unilateralism, war and humiliation” (A/65/PV.12[2010]), superseding the “triumph of Logos” (A/53/PV.8[1998]) thus enacting cultural violence in international relations, e.g.

Lawlessness is manifested in acting outside of international law and the United Nations Charter and relying on the glorification of force and the blatant use of military might. Lawless militarism of the powerful has given rise to increasing violence and terrorism and is also marketed as their panacea. (A/59/PV.9[2004]). Yazid hence represents the pursuit of a monopoly of power, monologist self-interested utilitarianism, which by extension creates an environment of lawlessness, deprivation, exploitation, discrimination and enslavement of the dispossessed. In essence, from its inception and throughout, IRI has categorically rejected what is understood as an international system geared towards the maintenance of colonial imperial domination. One quote in particular points

moral corruption, arrogant powers (arrogance), lie, plunderers of humanity, trample the rights (of others), rancour, selfishness, destruction, corrupt powers, alien domineering, materialistic, selfish desires, despicable, intimidation, vicious attitudes, inhumane policies, force, rhetorical defence, expansionist, militaristic logic, logic of coercion, liberalism, capitalism, insatiable greed, looting, ignorance, adventurism, atheism, inhuman actions, supremacy, institutionalisation of violence, violate the law (Appendix 1). 24 In this understanding elites are very consciously highlighted as responsible decision -makers, in contrast to the general population, which is never demonised (see e.g. on Iranian revolution and wartime propaganda images Rauh 2011), also reflective of the essence of the morality in the Shahnameh (Ferdowsi 2016). This stands in clear contrast to what is normally the focus of enemy images and hence enemy image scholarship, in which whole population groups as well as elites are demonised and dehumanised (see e.g. Keen 2004). 41

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis to the early beginnings of IRI’s relentless, unabated diagnosis of a world system they read as riddled with violence caused and driven by sharr:

In our time imperialism has produced an unprecedented amount of resentment among the populace in the subordinated societies. This resentment, which is a response to exploitation, coercion and consumption-oriented manipulation, has resulted in an intensified and expanded revolutionary challenge from below. […] yet it is a mistake to think of the export of manipulation, repression and militarism to the developing countries as a reaction to the resentment of the wretched. Since the resentment itself is a product of imperialism, the response to it is also a product of imperialism. Seen in this light, manipulation, repression and militarism are the organic commodities of imperialism in search of global markets. (A/34/PV.21[1979]) Lawlessness was de facto experienced by IRI after Iraq’s invasion in 1980, when its position as ‘pariah’ excluded it from the normal protective procedures and measures by the UN system (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Pirseyedi 2013). This experience triggered a historical reading of the international system: the domination by super-powers during the Cold War resembled the archetypical political despotism (or tyranny) manifested in the rule of Yazid (Gieling 1999) during early Islamic history. In a time-space collapse, typical of IRI’s political discourse, the mandatory resistance to such despotism as reflective of the Karbala complex—i.e. victory in defeat—is expressed particularly clearly in 1984 when Velayati said: “I stress the continuity of the struggle in order that those who usurp the rights of nations will not make the mistake of relaxing for a moment” (A/39/PV.15[1984]). In 1985, frustrations reached a peak: While IRI was preoccupied with the country’s military and legal defences locally, regionally and internationally (Pirseyedi 2013), connections between their own situation and that of other peoples were made, linking other communities to similar experiences, hence globalising the Karbala complex:

Violation of international laws and norms, especially when questions of international and national peace and security are concerned, is on the increase in variety, quantity and quality, and those human communities which find themselves defenceless in the face of transgressions and aggressions are inevitably drawn to certain unilateral measures and arrangements in order to prepare themselves to confront all sorts of external aggression. (A/40/PV.20[1985]) Speaking to the promised challenging of major powers (Pirseyedi 2013), Ardakhani made this globalisation of the Karbala complex clear already in 1980: “As long as there is oppression and terror and as long as there is inequality and exploitation, the forces of tyranny will wage war upon the forces of liberation, and right will battle wrong. Indeed, the history of mankind is the history of such struggles” (A/35/PV.33[1980]). In 1984 Velayati played on the strings of the Karbala complex in the same way by expressing the paradox of victory in defeat and the martyrdom of the struggle despite overwhelming odds against it:

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

Today, practically all the oppressed and tyrannized people of the world, and particularly their fighting vanguards who have risen to fight back, rarely think of immediate victory as their motivation for action, and this hopeful development is an indication of the rapid growth in the consciousness of the oppressed of all continents. (A/39/PV.15[1984]) In the reading of world politics, IRI perceives the forces against which it is necessary to engage, resist and fight in such a manner, as sharr:

Lies have taken the place of honesty, hypocrisy has replaced integrity and selfishness has taken the place of sacrifice. Nowadays, deception in interactions is called foresight and statesmanship. Looting the wealth of other nations is called development efforts. Occupation is introduced as a gift in promotion of freedom and democracy. And defenceless nations are subjected to repression in the name of the defence of human rights. (A/64/PV.4[2009]). Ahmadinejad here reflects what Velayati said already in 1982, i.e. that “values like freedom, social justice and democracy are being misused, […] crimes are being committed in the name of liberty and human rights, […] concepts like social liberty and justice have become means of suppression, oppression and tyranny” (A/37/PV.27[1982]).

Domination, in turn, is supported by and upheld through the use of structural violence, i.e. violation of the law (at will), institutionalisation of violence, insatiable greed, the trampling of rights of others, inhuman actions, humiliation and rhetorical defence of the above:

a complex movement has emerged towards autocracy or even totalitarianism at the international level, a trend which is founded on hegemony and flouts justice, freedom, participation, the rule of law, tolerance, human rights, pluralism and democracy in a dangerous and unprecedented manner. (A/51/PV.4[1996]) IRI holds that the consequences for the colonised and those under hegemonic force, is the affliction with moral corruption, ignorance and materialist consumerism. They, together with decision-makers in the global system, must be seen as adhering to atheist (i.e. unethical and immoral) behaviour with dire consequences: “The global culture of violence and exclusion, which partially emanated from justification of violence as an acceptable means to achieve coalition objectives, has unwittingly nurtured global menaces ranging from ethnic suppression to terrorism” (A/54/PV.12[1999]).

Hegemony, as it develops out, and in continuation of colonial imperialism, is also seen as the precursor of exceptionalism—i.e. the hegemonic Self-perception as master puppeteers, providing “various pretexts to occupy sovereign states to cause insecurity and division, and then use the prevailing situation as an excuse to continue their occupation” (A/62/PV.5[2007]). IRI’s analysis of global regimes of violence is continuous over the decades, as the world experienced a change from bipolar Super Power rivalry, post-cold war transition to attempted

43

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis unipolarity in the early 2000s, and is therefore defined as racist, ignorant, deluded and phantasmatic:

The super-powers, in a ludicrous effort to justify their aggression, constantly talk about ‘threats to their vital interests’—as if they had some sort of natural right in all the countries of the world, as if the rest of the world were their own backyard. Is this anything but a feeling of racial superiority? Does this not reveal their evil mentality of viewing all nations of the world as being in need of their ignorant overlordship? (A/38/PV.13[1983]) In describing the consequences of these geopolitical trajectories in the regions, which Iran is part of and beyond, emanates to the conclusion that “the strategic violence that is manifested in efforts to deprive regional players of their natural domain of action, containment policies, regime change from the outside and efforts to redraw political borders and frontiers, is extremely dangerous and provocative” (A/68/PV.6[2013]). The exceptionalism, which grants a hegemon the rights to shape the world in its own interests25, assuming power of attraction and a centre of gravity in military, economic, political and cultural terms leads in IRI’s view to a division of the world, seen as antithetical to sustainable security and development, which is in contradistinction focused on dialogue, inclusion, participation, multilateralism and equity. Seemingly leaning on Wallerstein’s theory of centre-periphery (1995), Rouhani critiqued this tendency in international political theory and practice: “The prevalent international political discourse depicts a civilized centre surrounded by uncivilized peripheries. In that scenario, the relation between the centre of world power and the peripheries is hegemonic” (A/68/PV.6[2013]). The diagnosis of this prevalent system of thought and political practice “assigns centre stage to the North while relegating the South to the periphery [leading] to the establishment of a monologue in international relations” (ibid.), which by extension and as a logical repercussion breeds illusionary notions of security as a zero-sum game, winnable for the hegemon:

The illusion that one can aspire to securing greater peace and security at the cost of denying others that same peace and security should be cast aside once and for all. We should not allow any breathing space for, or the development of, a line of thinking that holds others to ransom through the artificial creation of insecurity. (A/73/PV.6[2018]) IRI’s analysis points to a “culture of violence” (A/54/PV.12[1999], A/69/PV.9[2014]), based on colonial imperialism, as an aspiration to achieve hegemony enforced by and leading to oppression. In IRI’s foreign policy discourse, this is read as a cycle of violence fed by secular political thought developed within the Enlightenment paradigm from which Liberalism,

25 For an example, see former US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, Robert Phillips Corker (C-Span 2017:27:10-29:47). 44

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

Marxism and Realism developed as co-defining elements in a discourse of international relations focused on exclusion and dominance, which has

surfaced as a paradigm of global interaction [leaving] its negative imprint on international affairs, but more regrettably it has permanently scarred the mentality of global actors and international relations theory […] the persistence of this paradigm is largely responsible for the most serious threat to the Middle East. (A/54/PV.12[1999]). IRI’s foreign policy discourse of violence and war in the international system between 1979 and 2018 is unwavering in its diagnosis of the world order, albeit with a certain rhetorical down-playing in 2003, when IRI is seemingly holding its breath, as the world saw the invasion of Iraq on false pretexts, and IRI possibly read into the invasion a plan laid out by the Project for a New American Century26 report (Donelly 2000, Leverett and Leverett 2013a) reflective of the Wolfowitz doctrine27. The report suggested the USA to bring five listed countries, among them Iraq and Iran, under its control, while the Wolfowitz doctrine suggests that the US should vie for world hegemony.

The discursive web of justice (adl) This discursive web consists of four statements (resistance, independence, sovereignty and security). In this discursive web, justice functions as a central force around which the statements rotate, much like the statements in the discursive web of violence being seen as constantly reinforced by (secularised) enlightenment theories (Liberalism, Realism, Marxism). As IRI came into being, the first real challenge was the fundamental threat to its very existence resulting from internal opposition (Keddie 2006, Leverett and Leverett 2013a) but most predominantly by Iraq’s invasion in 1980. Thus, in/security was arguably the most outstanding issue for IRI during the 1980s, as Iran was left to its own devises (Leverett and Leverett 2013a, Elling 2019). Security forms an enunciative field, connecting with the other statements (independence and sovereignty, but most significantly resistance) through a particular set of

26 A think tank of which a substantial number of the 2003 US administration key decision -makers had been members and/or founders, such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and then US ambassador to the UN John R. Bolton (now the current National Security Advisor). 27 Discussed in New York Times in 1992, quoting a “46-page document […] circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks [as saying] “part of the American mission will be "convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests." […] The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy. […] Its drafting has been supervised by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s Secretary for Policy” (Tyler 1992). See US National Archives for an archived copy. 45

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis shared elements28, many of which are central to the Dialogue among Civilisations (DAC) initiative, and its original core of security networking, hence tying justice firmly to IRI’s understanding of peace. In principle, DAC focuses on a constructive proposition for change away from hegemonic aspirations and imperial colonialism, towards multipolarity, justice and diversity in international relations (Khatami 2009, 2013a), reflecting back to 1979 and the 1980s and projecting forward to the present. As indicated above, security is intimately connected to resistance as these two statements share most of the elements in this discursive web. While security is obviously important, resistance is foundational.

A number of the elements in the enunciative field of resistance connects with dominance and structural violence, such as hegemonic and colonially inspired imperialism, which is criticised throughout the four decades of IRI’s existence, but does so by explicating solutions, placing their reading of justice as counter to what IRI sees as the policies of Western might in their former colonies (e.g. development aid practices, and democracy and human rights norms standards based on narrow, European definitions), e.g.: right to development as re-distributive (i.e. socio-economically defined and culturally developed through millennia in terms of indigenous and civilizational capital), resilience, people (i.e. human capital), constructive interaction and confidence building, courage, participation, ballot box, democracy, rationality, friendship, harmony, liberty, integrity, maturity, patience and flexibility. The latter being a matter of collapsing contemporary experiences of violent dominance and attempted unipolarity with those of Hussain at Karbala, as he struggled to talk sense29 and law30 with Yazid’s generals.

Importantly, however, the enunciative field of resistance functions also as a bridge between politics and religion, collapsing the two into what Foucault (1978) described as spiritual politics. A foundational keystone in IRI’s deliberations and metaphysical edifice is that the absence of spirituality from politics is akin to succumbing to “unrefined animal instincts” (A/63/PV.6[2008]), violence, savagery, materialistic tendencies, oppression of others, power- seeking and aggression. Spirituality, one of the elements defining resistance is directly linked

28 Pluralism, self-determinism, jihad, freedom, accountability, progress, determination, self-defence, lasting security, perfection, liveliness, value of choice, win-win principle, peaceful future, recreating the world order, structural cooperation on security, stability in cooperation, and the Astana process (Appendix 1). 29 Prophet Mohammad’s diplomatic negotiations with the power-elite of Mecca being the exemplary model to follow (Huda 2010). 30 Leaning on his brother Hasan, the second Imam, who is known for his conduct in peace negotiations with Muawyia (Yazid’s father), where he applied what is termed heroic flexibility—choosing a peace settlement through negotiations despite knowing the counterpart’s forthcoming violation of it (Khamenei n.d, Parsi 2017.). 46

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis to the discursive web of peace—as are morality and ethics, transformation, righteousness, justice-seeking, desirable, creativity, zeal, sacrifice, constructive dialogue, enduring peace, piety, steadfastness, spiritual prosperity, patiently (waiting), maturity, spiritual perfection, divine mindset31—and is directly derived from within a fundamentally religious reading of politics and what political aspirations should be oriented towards (see also Alikhani 2012, Ibrahim 2013, Pal 2017). Thus, central to human values, i.e. dignity. Importantly, the nature of humankind is understood as just and peaceful, contrasting the basic tenet of Hobbesian rationality and theory, which therefore must be resisted as a matter of dignity and justice.

Security then, is perceived of in terms of peaceful, dignified human, social and political interactions—and similar to current theorisation on human security in IR. The conviction that such peaceful international relations are attainable, led IRI to propose that regional states should organise themselves, rather than relying on the UN for protection (in its unreformed state), a proposal which in the UNGA speeches seem to have developed into Khatami’s peace initiative adopted by the UN in 1998, resulting in 2001 being the UN Year of Dialogue among Civilisations (GA/9747). The argument for an indigenous security architecture, in its earliest form (1986) focused on CBM, and is based in IRI’s diagnosis of imperial dominance in, and militarisation of the region32:

All the countries in the area must be able to mobilize the possibilities available to make arrangements for the establishment of a durable and permanent peace that guarantees regional security, as well as the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of each individual state. […] Our regional security can no longer be held hostage to superpower rivalry. (A/41/PV.19[1986]) It leans on IRI’s definition of security as based in multipolarity, accountability, responsibility, diplomacy, the rule of law, win-win principles for stability in cooperation, and shared values, while being fundamentally based in Islamic principles of political conduct as outlined by the Prophet and the Imams, in particular Ali, Hasan and Hussein.

By referring to the West (and in particular the US) as “tyrannical” (from 1979 through to 2018) in its foreign policy conduct, IRI Yazidifies the two centuries of domination by colonial imperial powers, by defining their practices as based on utilitarian self-interest and the

31 Additional shared elements: compassion, spiritual health, beautiful, brilliant, quest for loftiness, merciful, kindness, generosity, splendor, bounteousness, greatness, forgiveness, amity, goodness, inalienable human rights, venerable cultures, serenity, all-out participation, soulful breeze of spring, salvation (Appendix 1). 32 In 1983 defined as based on the law of the jungle (A/38/PV.13[1983]). This diagnosis was presented already in 1979, and is continuous through the 40 years studied. 47

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis promotion of a culture of violence and disorder, fomenting a cycle of violence in response to the detriment of the wellbeing of the world. In riposte to such practices, IRI turns to the Karbala complex, pointing out historical and contemporary instances of resistance to domination (e.g. independence struggles) contingent on human development. Hope then, is placed in such developments, foundational to “the day that the wise and the learned wrest the reins of power from the unwise and capricious” (A/53/PV.8[1998]) since human development in terms of its immateriality and ideational dimensions is the prime requisite for induction of (material) motion in paving the way for the soteriological promise (Imam al-Mahdi). Indicatively for IRI, the collapse of the bipolar world order is partially attributed to resistance movements and therefore human development in all its diversity. In this (messianic) reading of the present, the past and the future, IRI reiterates over the decades, that the “the era of dominance by super- Powers over the destinies of the third world and the oppressed nations is very much a closed chapter” (A/43/PV.14[1988]); that the idea of unipolarity “is but an illusion” (A/53/PV.80[1998]); that “The era of a world polarized by the premises of hegemony or the domination by a few Governments is over” (A/64/PV.4[2009]); and that “the age of zero-sum games” has come to an end (A/68/PV.6[2013])—as resistance to domination is accordingly an indispensable feature of human development towards perfection and the establishment of justice, irrespective of temporal conditions. Thus, human development is tied to the time-space collapse of resistance “in the deeper layers of history”, contemporaneously exemplified by “anti-colonial struggles and independence movements”, termed in Khatami’s framework as “Civil Society” (A/53/PV.8[1998]), i.e. resistance movements and essentially the common struggle of jihad in the attainment process of adl.

The development towards multipolarity and diversity (in a wider sense enshrined in IRI’s understanding of dignity) is juxtaposed with e.g. the Umayyad mode of imperium in its western guise, i.e. dominance as anti-diversity and constitutionally racist (colonial imperialism) and tribalistic (universalised provincialism). By placing the “ever-inspiring fountain of faith” as an absolute criterion for the eradication of “old and new shackles from humanity [which] arrests the eternal cycle, eventually emancipating humankind from the bounds of historical determinism” (A/53/PV.8[1998]), IRI foregrounds guided spirituality as the bedrock of politics based on ethical and moral values, while pointing to the absence of spirituality in politics as akin to succumbing to animal instincts. In other words, secularised politics is relegated to the realm of violence and “savage, racist regimes” (A/38/PV.13[1983]), i.e. uncivilised, unethical, immoral and thus unjust, ultimately feeding into “the global culture of violence ”

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

(A/54/PV.12[1999]), reinforced by the archaic mindset of colonialists and the grave cycle of injustices following in the wake of hegemonic “colonial rule”, its consequential “inhuman bondage” and neo-colonialist “heavy boots of soldiers” (A/36/PV.26[1981], A/53/PV.8[1998], A/72/PV.7[2017]). Thus, affirming that truth and justice have not yet been established as “it is premature to celebrate the ultimate triumph of Logos over the sword” (A/53/PV.8[1998]). That ultimate triumph will come in the shape of a culture of peace, dependent on the end of a politics of dominance (in the shape of sharr), foregrounding cultural diversity, non-violent solutions to conflict, knowledge, ethics, empathy and wisdom in contrast to self-interest, homogeneity, the logic of might, injustice, unilateralism and exclusion, determinant factors in what is termed “strategic violence” (A/68/PV.6[2013]).

In other words, Iran has from its formation as an Islamic republic, continued unabatedly to focus its foreign policy discourse on issues of justice-still-to-come, as it pertains to the reading of independence and sovereignty as foundations on which to build a secure and peaceful future. As such security, and thereby defence of independence and sovereignty, is directly dependent on religiously founded resistance to hegemony and the interference of external interests and actors, and constitutionally ordained. The emphasis is rather on cooperation, equality, the rule of law and diversity—with a deep-rooted foundation in Iran’s historical experiences and institutional memory.

The discursive web of peace (salaam) In 1979, IRI’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs, , stated that “The revolutionary experiences of this century are once again demonstrating the ancient truth that the struggle for justice, freedom, peace and independence requires a moral dimension which is separate from and beyond the material structure” (A/34/PV.21[1979]). In one sentence, he captures the essence of this discursive web, tying it tightly to the previous, as well as to Iranian historical experiences and learned wisdom (e.g. Ferdowsi 2016)33, while placing it in contrast to its implicit opposite—sharr—or what Sadrā defined as the nonexistence of perfection (1981 cited in Kalin 2010:14).

33 As a political-historical text, the maturity and hence the actuality of the Shahnameh (Ferdowsi 2016, Dabashi 2019) across ages makes it useful as Shahnameh’s moral politics is tightly knotted into the weft of Iranian political thought. While the basis of that morality might seem dichotomous (bad/immoral/ineffective vs. good/moral/ethical/effective governance), the insertion of human fallibility complicates the binaries considerably, making even the ‘purest’ of characters susceptible to moral and political corruption, or an early death due to human fallibility and frailty. A strong theme of being hung in between triumph and defeat, based on “the very fragility of human existence” (Dabashi 2019:57). 49

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

The discursive web of peace consists of five statements (dialogue, dignity, negation of violence, truthfulness and realistic approach), derived from the religious fundamentals for international interaction discussed and exemplified by Ali Akbar Alikhani (2012). In short these may be listed as:

The respectful attitude to all people […] Negation of violence […] Compliance with moral and humanitarian principles […] Precedence of dialogue as the main way of solving problems […] Compliance with covenants […] Respect for all thoughts and religions […] Attention to realities and power equations. (ibid.:4-21) The statements and the web formed around these, consists of elements focused on and drawn from what might be conceptualised as Islamic Peace, or more rightly as a fundamental value in Islamic theosophical traditions discussing peace as an absolute in societal relations, state building and the contact with others (i.e. international affairs). Hence, the statements and their enunciative fields relate directly to a religiously founded conceptualisation of peace and peacefulness as characteristic of human nature and society34.

Peace functions in this discursive web, as does enlightenment theory and justice in the previously discussed webs: as the centre which all other statements and elements relates to in a constantly re-enforcing process. The fundamentals are closely tied to the Islamic concepts of adl and adab, which in their minimum definition may be found also in Galtung’s deliberations on positive peace (1969 and 1990). Adab is the foundation of all aspirations to reach a peaceful society, and as such is linked to jihad (the inner struggle to reach adab) and ihsan (practicing adab, i.e. guided knowledge), whether on an individual or a local or global level, and is focused on the continuous process of betterment (beautification) of the soul (individual), with the aim of achieving the ideal and inherently human qualities of thinking, speaking and doing good35. IRI’s deliberation reflects this, seeing the realisation of this as a prime requisite for dialogue across the West and East/Islamic divide. Following Khatami’s deliberation (2013a and 2013b36) on historical grievances, since the eras of the Crusades and Western colonisation of

34 The following elements are full circle, i.e. shared between the five statements: dialogue, knowledge, democracy, good governance, constructive engagement, diplomacy, ethics, empathy, wisdom, learning and listening, fairness, sustainable peace, human perfection, prosperous (prosperity), lasting security, eradicate poverty, moral obligation, perfection, serenity, inclusive participation, companions , constructive dialogue, freedom, social dynamism, salvation, rationality, value (of) choice, non-violent solutions, win-win principle (new paradigm), sustainable security, peaceful future, recreating the international order, structural cooperation on secu rity, stability in cooperation, Astana process (Appendix 1). 35 This has its basis in Zoroastrian cosmology (Boyce 1996, 2001). 36 The short discussion below mainly draws on works by Khatami, which are reflective of the UNGA speeches. As President he was responsible for the public presentation of the Dialogue among Civilisations initiative, and is seen as the originator of it (e.g. Petito 2007). His deliberations bear clear marks of his professional background as a pedagogue and Ayatollah. 50

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis the East and South have passed into the pages of history, so must the Western self-image as a natural or historically given dominator and subjugator of the global South be relegated to the past in order to initiate civilisational dialogue: “The advancement and promotion of a culture of peace is contingent upon the recognition of the constructive role of nations coupled with avoidance of domination, unilateralism, confrontation and exclusion” (A/53/PV.8[1998]). If this fails, global relationships will continue to emit from the entrenchment of enmity and protracted grievances as a consequence of the domineering effects of colonial practices and fundamental injustices. In IRI’s understanding, the continuity of such a relationship between the West and the Islamic world (and the global South), will result in heightened destructive tendencies in both spheres, in those under attempted colonisation (or spheres of hegemony), and also in the internal dynamics of e.g. Muslim minorities in the West, whose societal problems stem from “historical and emotional factors” as a consequence of being “put under emotional, political and social pressure” (Khatami 2013b:500). Representative of IRI’s analysis, this problem is understood as a consequence of the colonial mindset, which erases a cross-fertilised history of “immense cultural, intellectual and civilizational influences for both worlds” (ibid.:500), while evoking the misconceived perspective of governments and systems that see Muslims as aliens and threats to the “civil and intellectual independence of the West” (ibid.). A similar note was made at the UNGA in 1997 (A/52/PV.6), as IRI commented on the need for the enforcement of the rule of law as member states “simply cannot provide a peaceful and prosperous life for people through coercion, autocratic decisions and a cultural domination and hegemony”—a rule of law, which needs to be equal to all.

With this analysis it should not be surprising that the elements in this discursive web heavily focuses dialogue and dignity, both of which are also religiously central—not only in a reading of the peace verses in the Qur’an but in the interpretation into present day politics, via the experiences of the Prophet Mohammad as well as the first three Imams; Ali, Hasan and Hussein. Their experiences of resistance may easily be read into the non-dialogical and undignified practices maintaining other peoples as enemies and inferior—a manoeuvre quintessential for colonial designs (e.g. Fanon 1963, Mbembe 2003, Said 2003, Dabashi 2007, 2008, 2015, 2019). This is a dangerous delusion, according to Khatami (2013b), which will only bring harm to global stability. He places the responsibility to overcome such negative continuities on Western thinkers (Khatami 2009, 2013a, 2013b), in bridging—through intellectual diplomacy—the gap in contemporary misreadings of the actual global dynamics, i.e. an era in which both “old and new forms [of colonialism]” (Khatami 2013b:502) may

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis possibly come to an end. Thus, he calls for a cognitive transition to take place in which the colonial mindset must be transgressed.

Peace is in this reading contingent on both the individual and collective responsibility to structurally pave the way for a just, equitable and peaceful order, bringing forth the soteriological promise and eschatological conclusion, i.e. the establishment of a permanent peace based on divine knowledge as per the holy prophets (Judean, Christian and Islamic) and the Imamate. While this is emphasised as the ultimate end goal, any attempts to thwart such development is divinely mandated by direct and unabated resistance as a matter of adl, based in the truthful relationship—by the way of e.g. honesty, the rule of law, justice, building confidence, patience, sober analysis, democracy/representation, good governance, transparency, diplomacy, empathy, accountability and the recognition of rights—between human beings, society and the divine. In essence, the attainment of such truthfulness is predicated on the greater (inner) jihad as a spiritual and intellectual attainment process, where the acquirement of knowledge (adab) leads to good thoughts, speech and acts37, and the beautification of the soul—thus divinely inspired harmony between individuals, society and the world (ihsan). Seen in this light, the individual shortcomings of the above contributes extensively to the occurrence and spread of sharr (injustice, oppression, tyranny etc.)—the accidentality of processual formations and consequences of a world, metaphysically characterised by contingency: “Whatever good happens to you, it is from God; and whatever evil befalls you, it is from your own self” (Qur’an 4:79;3:165), in other words great value is placed on individual choice (e.g. value of choice). As such, sharr is specified as a cosmic reality of pure contingency (imkan), thwartable by human actions and interaction, e.g. based on knowledge and wisdom, piety, ethics, virtue, vigilance, purity, mercy[fulness], generosity, sacrifice and the strive for perfection and beauty. In this sense, good and evil cannot be regarded as diametrical opposites since “one is the nonexistence of the other; therefore, goodness is existence or the perfection of existence and evil is the absence of existence or the nonexistence of the perfection of existence” (Sadrā 1981 cited in Kalin 2010:14). In other words, for IRI,

37 The centrality of good intentions, words and deeds is found also in Zoroastrian theology, where these are intimately connected to human freedom to choose to do what is good or wicked, with dire consequences for the afterlife: “‘he who makes better or worse his thought, that one, by his deeds and words, (makes better or worse) his daēnā [soul]; she [who sees truth] follows his leanings, wishes and likings […] So the daēn ā of the wicked man shall destroy for herself the assurance of the straight (path); his soul […] shall suffer … at the Bridge of the Separator because of his deeds and because of having turned aside from the tongue’s path of truth’ […] referring to the act of the spirit-hag, shaped by the sinner’s deeds, in plunging off the Bridge his soul […] loosing for both the way to paradise” (Boyce 1996: 238f, emphasis in original).

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis peace is predicated on each and every individual’s active strive to attain adab and ihsan, leading to the possibility and establishment of adl. Thence, Ahmadinejad’s insistence, that peace is dependent on “respect for the dignity of humans and the flow of love and affection in all relationships, ties and regulations, and the reform of present structures” (A/62/PV.5[2007]) is a logical consequence.

It is clear that IRI’s understanding of peace as a substantial value remains throughout, closely defined through the prism of spirituality, and thereby religiously required aspirations for global structures of dialogue and dignity. Peace is thereby what explicates not only the goal of human struggles, but also diagnoses the problem (sharr) and advises the cure (justice).

There is a constant focus in the speeches on the relation between state and population, and between states. On the individual level, the emphasis is on the responsibility to acquire knowledge (adab), and thus behave peacefully, this constitutes the basic foundation of Islamic peace and is closely tied to the ShahanShah tradition (and thus the moral-political history of the Shahnameh), in the sense that the population bears the responsibility to demand good governance and in the lack thereof rise up in defiance. Thus, IRI draws on a time-space collapse in the sense that sharr in the shape of e.g. deception/the Lie can be challenged through the individual acquisition of knowledge, which in turn, enables the recognition of deception, structurally rooting out political (moral) corruption, establishing justice through actively resisting sharr: “The Almighty changes the fate of no people unless they themselves show a will for change. (the Holy Koran, XIII: 11)” (A/60/PV.10[2005]).

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

IRI’s foreign policy practice

The Government of the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran, inspired by the divine teachings of Islam, believe that all human beings are equal, and we absolutely reject the logic of racial discrimination through which the super-Powers intend to humiliate the rest of humanity. We believe, therefore, that our only hope lies in the collective movement of the oppressed nations of the world in the direction of ending hegemony of the super-Powers. […] the NAM hold promise that the movement will play a great, effective, historic role in the formation of future world policies. (A/38/PV.13[1983])

Cooperation of the countries in the region in social, humanitarian and cultural, economic, industrial, scientific and technical, and political and international fields, as well as coordination in the preservation of the environment and the energy sector, will undeniably be useful in fostering mutual confidence, which is essential for the success and longevity of any security regime. (A/46/PV.5[1991])

Security, development and prosperity in the third world require the promotion of cooperation and the utilization of proven arrangements and mechanisms for confidence-building. (A/53/PV.8[1998])

Global problems will be resolved, justice administered and peace maintained only through the collective determination and cooperation of all nations and States. (A/64/PV.4[2009])

We are here because the preservation of interests and security in the world in the least costly manner is possible only through the cooperation of and coordination among countries. (A/73/PV.6[2018])

The quotes listed here are indicative of the focus on practice in IRI’s UNGA speeches analysed above. As such the speeches provide a good insight, over time, into the foreign policy discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as a practice of communicating with the world community, presenting its foreign policy objectives. In short these may, based on the analysis of the speeches, be concisely outlined as resistance to what is seen as antithetical to their foreign policy principles (independence and freedom from colonial imperialism or hegemony), and the establishment of global peaceful relations through cooperation and dialogue, based on multipolarity, equity and diversity, all of which create a secure international environment.

However, discourses need not necessarily translate into corresponding practices. IRI is adamant, throughout the speeches covering the four decades under study, that words are not

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis enough, i.e. that action is needed to facilitate the changes they argue to be indispensable for the preparation of the return of the occulted Imam of Time. Consequentially, this chapter aims at identifying whether this discourse has been implemented in practice.

Dialogue and security In 1998, Khatami described IRI’s position thus: “The Islamic Republic of Iran, in keeping with its fundamental beliefs and deep-rooted heritage of civilization, seeks a world blessed with peace and tranquillity based on human dignity” (A/53/PV.8[1998]). Hence, as the realisation of a peaceful world accordingly should be absolutely central to IRI, it is not surprising that in 1979 IRI’s “first major diplomatic step […] was to unilaterally cancel orders [and] resell” earlier purchases of military equipment from the US, France, and West-Germany etc. (Pirseyedi 2013:34). Since then Iran has been actively involved in UN diplomatic operations for arms control (Pirseyedi 2013, Parsi 2017); in demands at regional and global levels, through inter-governmental organisations, for West Asia to be declared a nuclear- and WMD free zone38 (Guardian 2015, A34PV.21[1979]-A/73/PV.6[2018]); and has placed much greater focus on political reforms (constitutional and representative), than military intervention in neighbouring countries (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen) facing war and internal strife (Panorama 2012, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, EEAS 2015, Gaetan 2015, Tabrizi and Pantucci 2016, S/2017/949, Blumi 2018).

IRI’s discourse on peace also aims at addressing the fundamental issue of arms and their proliferation, claiming direct correlation between arms, war and insecurity. Hence, as early as 1986, IRI suggested the establishment of a structure for confidence building in the Persian Gulf region, with the ultimate objective of de-militarisation, and as a mechanism to defuse tensions between the gulf-states. This was preceded by 1982 shuttle-diplomacy in the Gulf (Yemma 1982), preparing for peace while still embroiled in war with Iraq. Since the mid-1980s, Iran has been quick in reaching out to neighbours and the post-USSR states, in the UNGA speeches and through the establishment of bilateral agreements on CBM, with for instance , , , Iraq, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and (VOA 2010, Frankopan 2018, Caspian Sea Convention 2018, RT 2019a, pressTV 2019b, Moscow Times 2019, Al Jazeera 2019a). Concerning the Caspian Sea, IRI advocates for the Caspian to be a de-militarised zone.

38 In 2015 Iran hence along with “other Arab and non-aligned states” backed Egypt’s proposal to initiate a process to ban WMD (including nuclear weapons) in the WANA region. The proposal was blocked by the USA, Great Britain and Canada (Guardian 2015).

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However, as a matter of the Islamic fundamental of realistic approach, IRI has accepted the legal status of the Caspian as only partially de-militarised, i.e. excluding all non-littoral states’ military presence (Caspian Sea Convention 2018). The convention was successful because its “outline terms [are] mutually acceptable to all sides” (Frankopan 2018:57)39. Iran is also actively involved with international organisations focused on security, such as the (Eurasian) Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (Escobar 2019); the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia formed in 1999 (CICA 2019); Ashgabat Agreement on the facilitation of movement of people and goods and deepening of economic and cultural ties, hence in IRI’s view confidence building, between India, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Oman and Iran (Aliyeva 2018, Times of Oman 2018).

Another step towards achieving world peace is, according to IRI, the reformation of the UN, a matter of both justice and resistance. While IRI has argued for reforming the organisation since 1979, Ahmadinejad’s call for reforms in 2005 may perhaps represent this best, in the sense of tying it to IRI’s foreign policy fundamentals:

The United Nations must be the focal point of reliance, hope and participation for all peoples and Governments, and a forum for dialogue, understanding and cooperation to achieve peace and tranquillity throughout the globe. The attainment of that objective requires, first, that justice reign supreme in the Organization, and that, in accordance with its Charter, all Member States enjoy equal rights. Greater power or wealth should not accord expanded rights to any Member. (A/60/PV.4[2005]) IRI’s consistent insistence on the reformation of the UN can be seen for instance in their engagement with parallel multilateral institutions and organisations, such as NAM and the Group of 77 (G77), to bring about a stronger coherence among what IRI perceives as the excluded South within the UN system, as well as outside it—organising state based resistance on a global scale (IranReview 2012, NAM 2012/Doc.7, UN 2012, HJS 2013, Leverett and Leverett 2013a).

As a conformation of IRI’s consistency in terms of speech and act over the years, Iran was elected to the chairmanship of the NAM from 2012-15, based on strong support within the movement (Leverett and Leverett 2013a), hosting the 2012 NAM summit in Tehran, where among other issues a peace plan for Syria was discussed (Dehghan 2012)40. The summit was

39 According to Frankopan (2018:57), the ground-breaking agreement on the legal status of the Caspian Sea might well be the “the most significant step [as it may] transform oil and gas supplies […] for markets all around the world”. 40 Iran issued a 6-point plan in December 2012 (reduced to 4-points in 2015), focused on political solutions (Panorama 2012, Tabrizi and Pantucci 2016). 56

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis attended not only by the 120 member states41, but also by Kofi Annan and Ban Ki Moon, former and then presiding UN Secretary General, Martti Ahtisaari and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (NAM 2012/Doc.7, HJS 2013). As such, the President of the 66th session of the UNGA stated at the NAM summit in Tehran, that it is expected “that the Non-Aligned Movement will play a role of the utmost importance in the re-vitalization of the General Assembly and United Nation reform more generally, including reform of the security council to reflect the new world order” (UN 2012:3).

Indicative of the selection of foreign policy practices outlined above, IRI has been, and seemingly continues to be focused on step-by-step implementation of agreements within the Global South in a wide range of fields. It is also indicative that the agreements often integrate economic, scientific, cultural and security issues, hence reflecting the multidimensional approach in the Dialogue among Civilisations paradigm, and the Islamic principles guiding IRI’s foreign policy discourse (Ramazani 1992, Garver 2006, Koolaee and Hafezian 2010, Goff 2015, Lee 2016, Agazade 2018, Frankopan 2018, Zaccara 2018, Dash et al. 2019, Imtiaz 2019)42. A typical example being the latest agreements signed with Iraq (Bourse&Bazaar 2019). Cooperation with major (in IRI’s discourse, imperial) powers, such as the USA and Great Britain e.g. in Bosnia, and Afghanistan (prior to the land invasion by NATO forces), worked well (Leverett and Leverett 2013a and 2013b). According to Jack Straw, former British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Britain and the US had

a great deal of cooperation [with Iran]. The Iranians gave huge amounts of intelligence cooperation to the international alliance to remove the Taliban. […] until you have this disastrous few lines in President Bush’s State of the Union address […] where he talked about the ‘Axis of Evil’. (Amanpour 2019) Therefore, the 2015 agreement on nuclear power (JCPOA) marked a momentum, while the intelligentsia and political elite in Iran, before the signing of it, foresaw its breakdown (Seramat

41 “The 16th NAM Summit held in Tehran from 30-31 August 2012 staged a gathering of 120 member states of the world community—29 heads of the states including the presidents of Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the Palestinian Authority, and the emir of Qatar, the prime ministers of India, Iraq, Syria and Bangladesh. Other three-quarters were represented by senior officials: vice presidents, deputy prime ministers, foreign ministers and envoys. Besides, 7 observer states and 10 member organisations including the UN, the African Union and the Arab League also joined to this second largest gathering after UN General Assembly. The Tehran Summit ended up with a resolution having 700 clauses including nuclear disarmament, Palestinian independent statehood, right to peaceful nuclear energy, combating Islamophobia and so on. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah addressed the delegations along with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who handed the rotating NAM presidency over to Iran” (Rahman 2012:342, see also Liangxiang 2012, SG/SM/14477[2012]) 42 See also e.g. Koforidua n.d., Peyvand 2005, Tejas 2015, Fakude 2016, Iran Daily 2016, Jamshidi 2017, RT 2017, 2019b, Mills 2017, Daily Sabah 2018, FT 2018a, 2018b, Noori 2019, IRIMFA 2019, Karavayev 2019. 57

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Seramat 2015)43. As such the JCPOA is a typical IRI DAC approach to adversaries: diplomacy and dialogue, rather than offensive confrontation.

Iran, in relation to the Silk Road project, invests in connectivity and transit networks of both goods and energy with a number of countries in the regions, e.g. Chabahar port in cooperation with India and Afghanistan, and trans-rail networks linking China, via Kazakhstan and Iran, to the western parts of West Asia with the end goal of upgrading rails for transport to Europe, as well as easing human mobility (visa free travel) within and between regions (Adelkah 2015, Frankopan 2018) 44 . Knowledge cooperation is also a huge area of investment for IRI (Kirkegaard 201845, Tishehyar 2019), as is cultural exchange programmes, and industrial cooperation (Garver 2006, Leverett and Leverett 2013a, pressTV 2019a)—all of which ties directly into the DAC paradigm’s focus on development and exchange among equally footed actors in a multipolar setting.

The pulse of the beating heart A dominant theme in the surveyed literature on IRI’s foreign policy is the reading of IRI’s growing influence as a threat to international peace and security, inducing political and academic forms of veridifications. However, departing from the analysis in this thesis, one can distinguish IRI’s foreign policy interests as stated by Zarif: “constructive engagement and effective cooperation” (2014:5). Seen from a historical and contemporary macro perspective, Frankopan describes and analyses (2018:56) “the way in which the heart of the world is being knotted together”, as a nervous system traumatised by the onslaught of the Great Game, reconnecting to establish a modus operandi of historical normality (Nordberg 1979, Frankopan 2015) within a stable and healthy nervous system. This process is fraught with problems and challenges, but continues even so unabatedly, brought forward with the prime methodology of dialogue and CBM (e.g. Xi 2014, Frankopan 2018, PRC 2019). The conceptualisation of cooperation in the Dialogue paradigm developed by IRI, places conversation and diplomacy

43 In a session, Iranian researchers were partially grilling the minister of foreign affairs and other high -ranking Iranian negotiators on the forthcoming signing of the JCPOA, asking what IRI will do once the US pulls out of the agreement. Foreign minister Zarif’s response was partly that the negotiating team and the government are well aware that the US will violate the agreement, and that for Iran, this is exactly one of the points: to show the world that the US cannot be trusted. In essence, referring implicitly to heroic flexibility. However, if the US would not withdraw from the JCPOA, this would constitute a win-win result, which is at the heart of IRI’s diplomatic principles (Seramat Seramat 2015). 44 See also e.g. SCMP 2017, SRB 2017, Lakshmi 2019, Sibbal 2019. 45 Based on personal communication (2018) with Dr. Kirkegaard on Iran’s scientific cooperation approach after her meeting with IRI’s ministry of education as a member of a Swedish higher education delegation. 58

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis based on equality between actors at the centre of international relations, with a focus on security networking (Zarif 2018a, 2018b), and has been adopted by several other actors apart from China, appropriating the Dialogue paradigm language. For instance, the recently proposed Russian regional security architecture for the Persian Gulf (MFA of Russia 2019) is worded almost exactly as that of IRI. In the region, the latest addition to this process of creating stable, cooperative security is the step-by-step integration into the security network developing in the Persian Gulf region (Batmanghelidj 2019, MEMO 2019, Petti 2019, pressTV 2019c). The discourse discussed in this thesis rings familiar in Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs deliberation on this recent development:

Our path is the same and our goal namely the stable security in the region is evident. We are convinced that Iranians are wise, and we believe that Iran has played an important role in the security of the region. […] Unfortunately, the problem of the world is the lack of sovereignty of reason and logic, so that in the world we witness the growth of populism and the emergence of irrational leaders, so we have to interact ourselves. (IRNA 2019) The regions, which Iran is part of are by Frankopan (2018) conceptualised as the heart of the world, in which Iran will return to its historical role as the economic transit-hub connecting intercontinental trade (Adelkhah 2015). A role arguably best served by building networks of amity instead of enmity. In other words, Frankopan sees Iran as a nerve centre in what is currently unfolding:

the story across large parts of the region linking the Pacific through to the Mediterranean has been about consolidation and trying to find ways to collaborate more effectively; the trend has been about defusing tensions and of building alliances; the discussions have been about solutions that are mutually beneficial and provide the platform for long-term cooperation and collaboration. These have been facilitated by multiple institutions that both enable dialogue and take practical steps to deepen ties between states. (Frankopan 2018:52) Based on epochs of experiences, IRI maintains that if a state is ready to participate in global security networking by assuming its core principle that the security of one country or a group of countries cannot be gained “through diverting insecurity to [others]” (Zarif/ORF 2016:226- 7), the dominant doctrine of balance of power, alliance building, anxieties from disparities in size and power, bloc politics and zero-sum mindsets might be abandoned in the policies of actors in the global system. Thus, as explained in 1999 (Zarif 1999:4 cited in Pirseyedi 2013:200):

This new Security paradigm [global security networking] starts with the proposition that security is the indivisible need and demand of the entire human race. […] thus, the adaptation of security enhancement by one country or coalition is not tantamount to loss or

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deprivation for others. Rather, as with components of any network, measures by any group to enhance its security augments the security of the entire network and all its members.46 Based on these examples, it may be concluded, that IRI’s foreign policy discourse is not only an abstraction, but also constantly developed in practical terms to the extent that each and every day represents moves in directions consistent with their foreign policy principles and discourse, which extent however, requires a single study of its own.

46 When Zarif explains the central tenets of Security Networking within the DAC, he uses the famous poem by 13th century poet Sa’di, also referred to in a number of UNGA speeches in different translations and guises: “Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul, If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain” (A/67/PV.9[2012]); “All human beings are members of one frame Since all, at first, from the same essence came. When time afflicts a limb with pain, The other limbs cannot at rest remain” (A/60/PV.10[2005]); “Human beings, who, in the Persian poet Sadi’s eloquent description borrowed from a saying of the holy Prophet of Islam, are various organs of the same body” (A/53/PV.8[1998]); “In the light of advances in information technology and of the new international information order, current issues and problems are interrelated, like the parts of an organism, and truly global” (A/57/PV.9[2002]).

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The importance of being IRI: Concluding discussion

Now that it appears that the age of cold war and fierce super-Power rivalry has come to an end, if the transition in the international system fails to embody the principle of justice, and if the concentration of resources in certain specific parts of the world do not cater to the qualitative promotion of living standards and growth and development in the least developed and the developing countries, I venture to state that a real confrontation between the oppressed and their oppressors will be a foregone conclusion. This is far from being a threat: it is a realistic analysis of the objective conditions of human beings who are cognizant of causes of their plight and their deprivation, and have come to realise that for the subjugated nations there exists no other choice but to overturn an imposed situation. (A/45/PV.5[1990])

This thesis started from a puzzle, concerning Iran’s growing influence in international politics, pushing forward its agenda of independence and sovereignty from imperially and colonially designed systems of dominance, despite lacking the military and economic power necessary to project hard power strategies of domination. With this in mind, the objectives of this thesis were twofold: 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, whether/how this is reflected in IRI’s foreign policy practices. To reach the objectives, the study was guided by the following research 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, as read from within IRI’s own deployment (in speech and act) of this discursive field?47

Narratives of attraction To IRI, primacy is given to the religious foundations of its foreign policy, while the historical experiences on which IRI’s military posture is based prescribes defensive rather than offensive military capabilities; weapons systems indigenously developed, produced and maintained

47 The original research question focused on discovering the dis/continuities of IRI’s foreign policy between 1979 and 2019. However, as the analysis of the data progressed, it became abundantly clear that the foreign policy did not display any discontinuities but rather a maturation of a discours e of resistance and dialogue. This matched the data concerning IRI’s foreign policy practices, particularly since the early 2000s, in which a steady increase in the adoption of IRI language and international policy proposals among a large number of actors in the global arena, from the EU, China and Russia to e.g. Cuba, India, Ghana, Pakistan, the UAE, and lately even among policy analysts in the West is clearly visible e.g. Xi (2014), Goff (2015), 2nacheki (2017), Ametbek (2018), Bonjour (2018), Koechler (2018), Khan (2018), 24NewsHD (2019), CDAC (2019), HKSIP (2019), Rhodes Forum (2019), Ruptly (2019), Shariatinia (2019), Valdai (2019). 61

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(partially as a consequence of its confrontation with the Western political sphere); and negotiation and peaceful relations between independent and sovereign actors, rather than dominance and hegemonic aspirations. Consequently, the veridifications of western discourses are constantly exposed by IRI while it seeks to employ veridifications of its own, i.e. that power in the international system ought to be horizontally employed as a matter of human survivability, and in a narrower Shi’a definition of peace as justice striding towards the eschatological conclusion.

The religious foundations reflect the nearly 1400 year-long theosophical debate on the concept of peace, which carries such weight as it is prescribed in the Qur’an as a central pillar to Islamic rule, and further enhanced by the first, second and third Imams’ words and deeds, culminating in the massacre at Karbala. With consistency, IRI has developed veridifications, based on the religious requirement of seeking to build a peaceful world, to prepare the return of the Imam of Time, and thence the Shi’a based prescribed resistance to tyranny. The political attraction therefore resides in IRI’s discourse’s consistent continuity and ability to ‘speak truth to power’ and exposing The Lie. Thereby, IRI becomes the target of, at least discursively, those powers they expose, transforming IRI itself into Hussain (as a principle) confronting a much stronger, dominating, militarised, colonial-imperial force. This discursive and political martyring transmutes into respect among countries with similar experiences of colonial imperialism and hegemonic practices, as the Karbala scenario unfolding at each annual UNGA opening session—just as during Muharram—is re-enacted, paralleling Hussain and his followers conduct of attempting to reason with Yazid’s commanders by unabatedly leaning on law and ethics, and the (force of) logic, rather than responding in Yazidian terms, i.e. with the logic of force. Time and space are hence collapsed at the very pulpit of the UNGA, constantly re- enforcing IRI’s legitimacy, not only politically but importantly as a religious state adhering to the Shi’a requirement of being in resistance. Hence, the more pressure and antagonism IRI is subjected to, the more IRI will resist, thus re-enforcing a self-propelling legitimacy in their modus operandi.

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The respect IRI enjoys (Leverett and Leverett 2013a) has increasingly transformed into support for the Dialogue among Civilisations initiative, and is lamented48 by Claudia Rosett49 (HJS 2013):

Iran has put a lot of effort into cultivating every opening it can find at the United Nations. Right now, we are hearing—certainly from the government in Washington—that Iran is isolated. At the UN, Iran is not in the least isolated. At the moment, and for the next two years, it has the second largest voting bloc in the UN General Assembly. It is a very big thing actually. The second largest voting bloc in the UN General Assembly is the Non- Aligned Movement. The narrative of attraction hence is founded on the consistency in critiquing politics of dominance, while at the same time developing structures for implementing a different world order based on the dialogue principles of multipolarity, independence and the rule of law. A pattern in the UNGA data set for instance is a kind of “Strategic patience policy”50 (UN 2019:2:09:17). While not explicitly presented as strategic patience, this approach may account for IRI’s repeated claim—approximately every 10 years—that hegemony and imperialism is nearing its end, and losing power by the day, while IRI itself actively works towards that end. In the regions of which IRI is part, the narrative attraction resulting in cooperation with other Shi’a communities, is based on more theological and political fundamental commonalities, however: “The root cause of Shi’a activism is not a reflection of transnational Shi’ism directed by Iran; rather, it is predicated on upholding communal interests in relation to the government and other strands of society” (Terhalle 2007:72). In other words, in its own wider religious Shi’a community’s adherence to the same principles and logics, IRI becomes a compatriot in the struggle against sharr and for independence rather than a puppeteer directing proxies. As stated by Leverett and Leverett (2013b:13:03-15:02): “what they want in the region is not pro- Iranian lackeys surrounding them [but] over time to see more and more countries in the region become independent in their foreign policies”.

In foregoing the foreign policy dimensions of IRI, Dabashi (2011:xiv) claims that

Shi’ism in the end is a paradox. It thrives and is triumphant when it is combatative and wages an uphill battle; it loses its moral authority and defiant voice the instant it succeeds

48 Visible in the US slamming of IRI’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, as an illegitimate negotiator, resulting in the IRI foreign ministry’s spokesman Mousavi’s conclusion that “The Americans have a strong fear of the logic of Dr Zarif and his negotiating skills” (Al Jazeera 2019b). 49 Then journalist-in-Residence at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. Her language is reminiscent of that of Donnelly (2000) and the Wolfowitz doctrine. 50 As stated by IRI’s ambassador to the UN, referring to the Islamic concept of sabr, constituting an important element in Islamic peace practices. 63

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

and is in power. It is, paradoxically, only in power when it is not in power—when it in power, it lacks legitimacy, authority, audacity. However, by defining itself as a combatative follower of Hussein, acting in defiance at the international level—re-enacting the Karbala complex—that legitimacy becomes self-propelled in exactly those terms, which makes Shi’i power legitimate in Dabashi’s deliberations. The core of IRI’s defiance feeds its disposition and legitimises its moral authority, thus its political legitimacy, perpetually defining and re-defining itself at every single historical moment—the enactment of its historical present—making it relevant even to peoples far beyond IRI. Thus, it is not surprising that talks on foreign policy and defence in Iranian state media oftentimes raises the question of the resistance continuum even after the demise of hegemony in international politics, hence preparing the ground for the next phase of resistance in terms of socio-cultural and economic development (Javid 2019c). Seen in this light IRI’s foreign policy discourse and practices are themselves a time-space collapse in which Iran finds itself in an ever-evolving experiential weave where history transmutes into the present—a mirror of political existence—as every day is Ashura, and every field is Karbala.

Contribution of this study to foreign policy research and global politics As Iran is recognised as one the least understood actors in the on-going disputes in the Persian Gulf region all research, taking its cue from the vantage point of Iranian foreign political logics, extensively using primary, Iranian sources is important, in research as well as in the political sphere. This thesis is a small contribution to such a body of knowledge.

In a more purely scientific sense, the thesis points towards the value of multidisciplinarity and the methodological choices made speak to the importance of utilising a wide array of traditions and methods, spanning the humanities, arts and social sciences. Based on my experiences of actively observing and writing about IRI’s foreign policy over the last three years, this approach generates predictive power, which is of value in subjects such as global political studies.

Further research Numerous research projects could be envisaged, with Iran as its focal point. However, the following are themes perhaps appropriate for a larger, more extensive study.

The data collected provides the first suggestion for further research for a larger project, i.e. deeper discourse analyses of the enunciative fields defined in this thesis, in a bid to increase our knowledge and understanding of one of the rising ideational powers of our time.

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One might also suggest a study on how IRI’s foreign policy principles correspond to domestic political practices, e.g. dignity, cultural violence, peace, dialogue etc., or, on the other hand pursuing the opposite, and investigate in depth IRI’s discursive geopolitical relationships and footprints, i.e. how the DAC language is spreading and how it relates to (un/changed) practices.

Another suggestion is a comparative historical analysis. The era after the demise of Nader Shah is oftentimes associated with Iran’s decline, culminating with the late Qajar dynasty. A question is therefore, considering the growing importance of IRI globally, whether IRI is contemporarily experiencing its comparatively strongest position (economically, militarily, socially and politically) in two-and-a-half centuries.

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Abbreviations

CBM: Confidence Building Measures

DAC: Dialogue Among Civilisations (initiative/year)

EU: European Union

G77: Group of 77. Originally consisting of 77 countries in the global South organising themselves within the UN system, as representative of the interests of the global South.

IRI: Islamic Republic of Iran

JCPOA: Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

NAM: Non-Aligned Movement

NOD: Non-Offensive Defence

UN: United Nations

UNGA: United Nations General Assembly

US or USA: United States of America

WANA: West Asia and North Africa

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Glossary

Adab: the beautification of the soul through the guided (in a Platonian sense) acquisition of knowledge, which is understood to further the development of good thought, speech and acts in individual conduct of Self in society, and in relation to God (see Dabashi 2012, Ahmed 2016).

Adl: justice, corresponds to and encompasses a wide range of relationships from the rights to equality and the realisations of potentials of the individual to questions of international law (Kalin 2010), and is contingent on the individual acquisition of adab.

Ayatollah: connotes the attainment of the next-highest educational degree possible in Twelver Shi’sm. An ayatollah is hence a highly educated expert in philosophy, Islamic theology and jurisprudence.

Fana (or fanaa): the annihilation of the Self. A Sufi concept revolving around the transformation of physical matter (Self) into a spiritual merge with the divine. Similar to the Buddhist concept of nirvana (see Dabashi 2011).

Fatwa: binding religious edict formulated by a religious authority, requiring action. A fatwa can only be absolved by a religious authority of the same or similar standing, e.g a Grand Ayathollah.

Haraam: religiously forbidden.

Ihsan: in short, doing or desiring to do good, “a person who does what is good, desired and beautiful” (Kalin 2010: 8). Often connoted with inner beauty and its external expression (see also Mottahedeh 2009).

Imkan: the world (immaterial and material) as pure contingency (Kalin 2010).

Jihad: self-betterment, i.e. the inner struggle to achieve adab, Ihsan and thereby adl to live in God (see Huda 2010).

Mustasafin/mustad’afun: oppressed (see Khomeini n.d. and Leverett and Leverett 2013a).

Mustakbarin/mustakbirun: oppressors (see Khomeini n.d. and Leverett and Leverett 2013a).

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Sabr: Meaning the excellence and the virtue of patience in interaction (an aspect of jihad), in contrast to e.g. the excellence or merit of armed combat. Patience in this sense must be understood as proactive (see Huda 2010).

Salaam: peace and is one of the concepts denominating God.

Shah: the title of King.

Shahadat: martyrdom.

Shahanshah: a title (King of kings) bestowed the rulers of successive Persian empires, from the third millennium BCE onwards. Historically denominating the governing office of the king, with its responsibility for the survival of the empire and its population in its diversity (Nordberg 1979, Lorentz 2007, Ferdowsi 2016).

Sharr: Structural, cultural and direct violence and violent disorder furthered by actors with explicitly destructive objectives, or ulterior motives, actors who then become representative of arrogance and exceptionalism. May be understood as an Islamic version of hard and soft power in realist theory. Kalin (2010: 7) defines it in a philosophical and theological context “within which the question of evil (sharr) is addressed as a cosmic, ethical, and social problem [extensively discussed in Islamic theodicy,] the analysis of the questions of evil, injustice, mishap, violence, and their place in the great chain of being”.

Umma: The Muslim community (in its totality).

Ulama: in this thesis this term refers only to the Twelver Shi’a Ulama, meaning doctors of theology, representing a horizontal power structure not to be confused with the Christian concept of Clergy. Consists of jurists, scholars, teachers and so called ‘models’ (exemplars) in the Twelver Shi’a community (Mottahedeh 2009, Lapidus 2014).

Velayat-e faqhi: guardianship of the jurists of Islamic law. According to Leverett and Leverett (2013a: 173) the “protectorship by qualified religious jurisprudence”. Governance based on Islamic rule of law, as developed by Ayatollah Khomeini (n.d.).

Westoxication: or in Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s conceptualisation (in translation): occidentosis. Westernisation is presented as a disease afflicting and destroying Iranian society from within, through colonial imperialism as praxis and internalised ideal (Ahmad 1984).

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

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A/40/PV.20, UNGA opening speeches, 40th session A/41/PV.19, UNGA opening speeches, 41st session A/42/PV.6, UNGA opening speeches, 42nd session A/43/PV.14, UNGA opening speeches, 43rd session A/44/PV.13, UNGA opening speeches, 44th session A/45/PV.5, UNGA opening speeches, 45th session A/46/PV.5, UNGA opening speeches, 46th session A/47/PV.5, UNGA opening speeches, 47th session A/48/PV.14, UNGA opening speeches, 48th session A/49/PV.5, UNGA opening speeches, 49th session A/50/PV.5, UNGA opening speeches, 50th session A/51/PV.4, UNGA opening speeches, 51st session A/52/PV.6, UNGA opening speeches, 52nd session A/53/PV.8, UNGA opening speeches, 53rd session A/54/PV.12, UNGA opening speeches, 54th session A/55/PV.16, UNGA opening speeches, 55th session A/56/PV.44, UNGA opening speeches, 56th session A/57/PV.9, UNGA opening speeches, 57th session A/58/PV.12, UNGA opening speeches, 58th session A/59/PV.9, UNGA opening speeches, 59th session A/60/PV.10, UNGA opening speeches, 60th session A/61/PV.11, UNGA opening speeches, 61st session A/62/PV.5, UNGA opening speeches, 62nd session A/63/PV.6, UNGA opening speeches, 63rd session A/64/PV.4, UNGA opening speeches, 64th session A/65/PV.12, UNGA opening speeches, 65th session A/66/PV.15, UNGA opening speeches, 66th session A/67/PV.9, UNGA opening speeches, 67th session A/68/PV.6, UNGA opening speeches, 68th session A/69/PV.9, UNGA opening speeches, 69th session A/70/PV.13, UNGA opening speeches, 70th session A/71/PV.14, UNGA opening speeches, 71st session A/72/PV.7, UNGA opening speeches, 72nd session A/73/PV.6, UNGA opening speeches, 73rd session 80

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Alijeva, K. (2018). India joins Ashgabat agreement on transport corridor. In AzerNews (2 February). [Accessible at]: https://www.azernews.az/region/126504.html. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Al Jazeera. (2019a). Iran: Rouhani welcomes developing relations with Qatar. Iran's president says his country has 'no intentions to have conflicts' with world powers and those in the region. In Al Jazeera (6 June). [Accessible at]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/iran-rouhani-welcomes-developing- relations-qatar- 190605154738749.html?fbclid=IwAR3MooJyc2T6ve8c_rburjGgVOhyIiOGHKMSs B9rnClTklpNfhvv78JdpHY. [Accessed]: 6/6 2019. —(2019b). US imposes sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. In Al Jazeera English (1 August). [Accessible at]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/imposes- sanctions-iranian-foreign-minister-zarif-190731203547531.html. [Accessed] 1/8 2019. Amanpour, C. (2019). In Twitter (July 26 2019). [Accessible at]: https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/1154747788430848007?s=09&fbclid=IwAR2A mLF_HEliwL9hOQQ1BOQWYE1VDkE5GC-vrSkmnzGWNoHlJ2h3zEGh8dU. [Accessed] 26/7 2019. Batmanghelidj, E. (2019). Abu Dhabi Can’t Afford to Keep Iran Out of Dubai. Lobe Log (August 8). [Accessible at]: https://lobelog.com/abu-dhabi-cant-afford-to-keep-iran- out-of-dubai/. [Accessed]: 12/8 2019. Bonjour, D. (2018). UAE-France Cultural Dialogue second phase. In Dubai Bonjour (September 8). https://dubaibonjour.com/2018/09/04/uae-france-cultural-dialogue- second-phase/. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Bourse&Bazaar. (2019). With focus on economic relations, Iran-Iraq ties move into ‘daylight’. In Bourse&Bazaar (April 1). [Accessible at]: https://www.bourseandbazaar.com/articles/2019/4/1/with-focus-on-economic- relations-iran-iraq-ties-move-into-the-daylight. [Accessed] 1/4 2019. C-Span. (2017). Secretary of State Confirmation Hearing, Part 1. In C-Span.org (January 11). [Accessible at]: https://www.c-span.org/video/?421335-1/secretary-state-nominee- rex-tillerson-testifies-confirmation-hearing&live=. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Caspian Sea Convention. (2018). Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. [Accessible at]: http://mepoforum.sk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Convention-on-the- Legal-Status-of-the-Caspian-Sea.pdf. [Accessed] 30/7 2018 81

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CDAC. (2019). China advocates dialogue, rebuts “clash of civilizations” as conference opens. In Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations (May 24). [Accessible at]: http://english.2019cdac.com/. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. CICA. (2019). CICA Forum homepage. [Accessible at]: http://www.cicasummit2019.tj/. [Accessed] 1/8 2019. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. (1979). [Accessible at]: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/ir/ir001en.pdf [Accessed]: 20/3 2019. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. (1989). [Accessible at]: https://www.icj.org/soginationallegislat/iran-constitution-of-the-islamic-republic-of- iran-1989/ [Accessed]: 19/3 2019. Daily Sabah. (2018). Turkey, Russia, Iran agree to use local currencies in trade. In Daily Sabah (September 9). [Accessible at]: https://www.dailysabah.com/economy/2018/09/10/turkey-russia-iran-agree-to-use- local-currencies-in-trade. [Accessed]: 27/7 2019. Dehghan, S. K. (2012). UN chief Ban Ki-moon in Tehran for the Non-Aligned Movement summit. The secretary general will meet senior Iranian officials including the country's supreme leader ahead of tomorrow's summit. In The Guardian (August 29). [Accessible at]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2012/aug/29/un- secretary-general-ban-tehran-non-aligned-movement-summit. [Accessed] 1/8 2019 Dirco.gov.za. (2018). Department of International Relations and cooperation of the Republic of South Africa (November 30). [Accessible at]: http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/bilateral/iran.html [Accessed] 21/3 2019. Donelly, T. (2000). Rebuilding America’s defenses Strategy, Forces and Resources. For a New Century Project for the New American Century. EEAS. (2015). Final declaration on the results of the Syria Talks in Vienna as agreed by participants. In European Union (October 30). [Accessible at]: https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/niger/3102/final-declaration-on-the-results-of-the- syria-talks-in-vienna-as-agreed-by-participants_en. [Accessed] 1/8 2019. Escobar, P. (2019). Iran at the centre of the Eurasian riddle. In Asian Times (17 June). FAS. (2012). Annual report on the military power of Iran. Executive summary. In United States of America Department of Defence. [Accessible at]: https://fas.org/man/eprint/dod-iran.pdf. [Accessed] 2/8 2019.

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conference/?fbclid=IwAR0gvChY5Ed7_KTUuHT8K5xKJUyP62pBF7fo0tjCtlXFBl7 IruQNwmhkSjg [Accessed] 21/3 2019. Iran Daily. (2016). South Korea Concludes deal on biggest economic cooperation with Iran. In Iran Daily (July 4). [Accessible at]: http://www.iran-daily.com/News/154451.html. [Accessed]: 7/8 2018. IranReview. (2012). The Mission of Iran’s Chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement. In Iran Review (September 7). [Accessible at]: http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/The-Mission-of-Iran-s-Chairmanship- of-the-Non-Aligned-Movement.htm. [Accessed] 1/8 2019. IRIMFA. (2019). Iran, Bolivia Sign MoU on Technological Cooperation. In Islamic Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs (July 24). [Accessible at]: https://en.mfa.ir/portal/newsview/41922/Iran-Bolivia-Sign-MoU-on-Technological- Cooperation. [Accessed]: 28/7 2019. Video / press conference with Mohammad) .ظریف محمدجواد خبری نشست / ویدئو .(ISNA. (2019 Javad Zarif). In Iranian Students’ News Agency (August 6). [Accessible at]: https://www.isna.ir/news/98051407163/%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%AF%D8%A6%D9 %88-%D9%86%D8%B4%D8%B3%D8%AA- %D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%B1%DB%8C- %D9%85%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF%D8%AC%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AF- %D8%B8%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%81. [Accessed]: 6/8 2019. IRNA. (2019). Iran’s strategy promoting security in region: speaker. In Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA (July 28). [Accessible at]: https://en.irna.ir/news/83415186/Iran-s- strategy-promoting-security-in-region-Speaker. [Accessed] 28/7 2019. Jamshidi, P. (2017). Iran, Venezuela Explore Economic Cooperation In Wake Of U.S. Sanctions. In Caspian News (September 9). [Accessible at]: https://caspiannews.com/news-detail/iran-venezuela-explore-economic-cooperation- in-wake-of-us-sanctions-2017-9-8-4/. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Javid, A. (2017). Iran IRIB1 "Negah Yek" interview with Gen Salami:fighting terrorism, :[In YouTube (August 14) [Accessible at . سردار سالمی,inspection,region https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6goXjTbezA. [Accessed] 17/3 2019. سردار سپاه ایران 2019a). Iran IRIB3 Deputy IRGC Chief Gen Fadavi:Yemen/Saudi/U.S)— In YouTube (Juni 9) [Accessible .عربستان،امریکا یمن :فدوی at]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82OWkDv6ajA. [Accessed] 17/3 2019.

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ایران ,2019b). Iran IRIB2 interviow with IRGC Gen. Salami: missile, doctrine in range)— :[In YouTube (February 4) [Accessible at .گفتگوی خبری سردارسالمی https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzfkmtIgUww. [Accessed]: 17/3 2019. نگاه ایران 2019c). Iran IRIB1 interview IRGC Gen Rezaei: US, renegotiation,EU,JCPOA)— :[In YouTube (June 12). [Accessible at .رضائی محسن سرلشکر:یک https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CNHF-4lL14. [Accessed]: 5/8 2019. JCPOA. (2015). The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. [Accessible at]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2165399/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear- deal.pdf [Accessed] 28/7 2019. Karavayev, A. (2019). How should we equip the North-South corridor?. In Analytic Media, Eurasian Studies (July 9). [Accessible at]: http://greater-europe.org/archives/7071. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Khan, I. (2018). Imran Khan’s speech in full. In Aljazeera (July 26). [Accessible at]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/imran-khan-speech-full- 180726124850706.html?fbclid=IwAR0pHpKkmZDE4xiD7kRMuq0_D4KIlhElOHxL HIGIYBUnk8Lzh_E-TB2iYgg. [Accessed]: 4/8 2018. Khamenei, A. (n.d.). Heroic flexibility. [Accessible at]: http://idc0- cdn0.khamenei.ir/ndata/news/24067/B/13920701_0124067.jpg. [Accessed] 4/7 2019. —(2011). The Leader’s view of Nuclear Energy. In Khamenei.ir (April 13). [Accessible at]: http://english.khamenei.ir/news/1442/The-Leader-s-View-of-Nuclear-Energy. [Accessed] 27/7 2019. .(Khatami, S. M. (2009). Khatami's ّ Full Speech at Australian National University (ANU YouTube (Mars 7). [Accessible at]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- IWL86kobBI. [Accessed]: 12/8 2019. Koechler, H. (2018). Culture in the age of globalisation. Report on the XVIIIth International Likhachev Scientific Conference "Contours of the Future in the Context of the World’s Cultural Development", Saint Petersburg, Russia, 17 May 2018. In Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute (June 29). [Accessible at]: https://doc- research.org/2018/06/culture-in-the-age-of-globalization/. [Accessed]: 5/7 2019. Koforidua, E. M. (n.d.). Govt seek Iran’s support for economic development. In Ghana Politics Online (n.d.). [Accessible at]: http://ghanapoliticsonline.com/govt-seeks- irans-support-for-economic-development/. [Accessed]: 12/7 2019.

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Lakshmi, S. A. (2019). Chabahar Port Signs 11 Investment Contracts. In MarineLink (July 24). [Accessible at]: https://www.marinelink.com/news/chabahar-port-signs- investment-contracts-468794. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Liangxiang, J. (2012). NAM summit in Tehran: A platform for anti-Americanism? In China.org.cn (September 3). [Accessible at]: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2012- 09/03/content_26413096.htm. [Accessed]: 12/8 2018. ManotoTV. (2015). Tehran to Cairo - English Subtitled. In YouTube (June 1). [Accessible at]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au3LGoUcoIg [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. MEMO. (2019). UAE calls for dialogue, ending escalation with Iran. In Middle East Monitor (June 24). [Accessible at]: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190624-uae-calls- for-dialogue-ending-escalation-with-iran/. [Accessed]: 25/7 2019. Moscow Times. (2019). Iran ‘Won’t Be Alone’ If U.S. Attacks, Russian Official Says. In The Moscow Times (26 June). [Accessible at]: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/06/26/iran-wont-be-alone-if-us-attacks- russian-official-says-a66169. [Accessed] 13/7 2019. MFA of Russia. (2019). Russia’s security concept for the Gulf area. In Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. [Accessible at]: http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/international_safety/conflicts/- /asset_publisher/xIEMTQ3OvzcA/content/id/3733575?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_xIE MTQ3OvzcA&_101_INSTANCE_xIEMTQ3OvzcA_languageId=en_GB&fbclid=Iw AR0ZK_Vb2mId9fjRRHivT9Tvpqn1s2kSmLTOd1kmAjVRp8Qa0FLWzL4h4gM. [Accessed] 26/7 2019. Mills, R. (2017). Qatar warms up to Iran on natural gas. In Bloomberg (July 20). [Accessible at]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-07-20/qatar-warms-up-to-iran- on-natural-gas. [Accessed] 4/8 2018. NAM 2012/Doc.7. (2012). TEHRAN DECLARATION The Declaration of the XVI Summit of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement. Issued of 30-31 August 2012, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran. NAM and Islamic Republic of Iran. Noori, A. (2019). Iran seeks relief from US sanctions in Asia. In Al Monitor (June 28). [Accessible at]: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/06/iran-seeks- relief-us-sanctions- asia.html?fbclid=IwAR1lr16OLasjORhGxDIRokpTRKfbfTy4DY4pJl1ydMvns- TIVXyy1tqfqOo. [Accessed] 28/6 2019.

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Panorama. (2012). Iran presents new 6-point plan for Syria. In The Iran Project (December 17). [Accessible at]: https://theiranproject.com/blog/2012/12/17/iran-presents-new-6- point-plan-for-syria/. [Accessed] 27/7 2019. Peyvand. (2005). Khatami: Alliance of civilizations meaningless without dialogue. In Peyvand News (December 30). [Accessible at]: http://www.payvand.com/news/05/nov/1283.html. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Petti, M. (2019). Iran Extends Goodwill Gestures to Its Enemies. In The National Interest (August 6). [Accessible at]: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/iran-extends-goodwill- gestures-its-enemies- 71841?fbclid=IwAR2SMGccNQnvOVvmzKv5vViMhkrPyebaY4rUjdq2Q3ZNzLmO KjME1JLxKBQ. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Persian Constitution of 1906. (n.d.). [Accessible at]: https://www.worldstatesmen.org/iran_const_1906.doc [Accessed] 20/3 2019. PRC. (2019). China’s National Defense in the New Era. The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Foreign Languages Press Co. Ltd. [Accessible at]: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-07/24/c_138253389.htm. [Accessed] 1/8 2019. pressTV. (2019a). Will US allow peace with Iran. In Press TV (June 22) [Accessible at]: https://twitter.com/PressTV/status/1142502798451453954?s=09&fbclid=IwAR1YRL s6tJxBW6Dgb8Pqt3vOkWzg9b3mz5mI-rWy-WYqf-l2Liqh6Ldxk7A. [Accessed] 1/ 2019. —(2019b). In joint statement, Iran, Iraq, hail ‘turning point’ in ‘strategic’ cooperation. In Press TV (Mars 12). [Accessible at]: https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/03/12/590857/Rouhani-statement-Ammar- alHakim-Hashd-alShaabi-Faleh-alFayyad-US-Baghdad. [Accessed] 30/7 2019. —(2019c). Iran, UAE agree to boost maritime security cooperation in joint meeting in Tehran. In Press TV (July 30). [Accessible at]: https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/07/30/602265/Iran-UAE-maritime-security- meeting-Tehran?fbclid=IwAR1J_-6s6AsVCVYpWarnLguJq0Sy- 2TMHNSOxEbBBhpmulIMhB3EXo3Yn5U. [Accessed]: 30/7 2019. Comments on the) رضایی محسن سرلشکر توسط اسالمی جمهوری دفاعی دکترین تشریح .(Rezaee.ir. (2016 anatomy of the defence doctrine of the Islamic Republic by Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezai). In YouTube (September 19). [Accessible at]:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_nsNxNV9l8&feature=youtu.be. [Accessed]: 28/7 2019. Rhodes Forum. (2019). Global (Dis)order: Towards Dialogue-based Worldviews. [Accessible at]: https://doc-research.org/forum/. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Ruptly. (2019). Cuba: Parliament rubber stamps electoral reform. In YouTube (July 14). [Accessible at]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eog8gqUeM3w&fbclid=IwAR31zwjCAgeu7Cf- wRHkzE_t6t_mOH3Z3aPnfalVAudjqzVDdMjdV5c6FcE. [Accessed] 14/7 2019. RT. (2017). Iran ready for Shanghai Pact full membership – Russian FM Lavrov. In Russia Today (April 24). [Accessible at]: https://www.rt.com/news/385912-russia-backs- iran-shanghai-pact/. [Accessed]: 8/10 2018. —(2019a). Russia & Iran ditching dollar for trade in favor of national currencies – Moscow’s envoy to Tehran . In Russia Today (February 6). [Accessible at]: https://www.rt.com/business/450763-russia-iran-ditch-dollar/. [Accessed]: 27/7 2019. —(2019b). Iran proposes ‘non-aggression pact’ to Gulf neighbors as regional tensions soar. In Russia Today (May 27). [Accessible at]: https://www.rt.com/news/460310-iran- gulf-non-aggression/. [Accessed] 27/7 2019. S/2017/949. Letter dated 13 November 2017 from the Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. [Accessible at]: https://undocs.org/en/S/2017/949 [Accessed] 1/8 2019. S/2019/496. (2019). Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran (14 June 2019) in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015). [Accessible at]: https://www.undocs.org/en/S/2019/496. [Accessed] 7/8 2019. SCMP. (2017). The railway to Iran – a visual explainer. In South China Morning Post. [Accessible at]: https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One- Road/iran.html. [Accessed] 8/8 2019. سواالت فؤاد ایزدی و سلیمی از ظریف پیرامون برجام در شورای راهبردی روابط خارجی .(Seramat Seramat. (2015 (Questions from Fouad Yazidi and Salimi to Zarif on the matter of JCPOA at the Strategic Council of Foreign Relations). In YouTube (October 4). [Accessible at]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_czokOIicg&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2qX_ mTUaqC3BntoBNSINLaQurKrfHdMQxVySVCJ3W_ZQnIvEczWDERopk. [Accessed] 26/2 2019. SG/SM/14477. (2012). Secretary-General Looks Forward to Meeting Heads of State, Government as Iran Hosts Sixteenth Non-Aligned Movement Summit, 29-31 August. 88

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In United Nations (August 22). [Accessible at]: https://www.un.org/press/en/2012/sgsm14477.doc.htm. [Accessed]: 10/9 2018. Shariatinia, M. (2019). Iran sticks to 'Look to the East' doctrine amid frustration with Europe. In Al Monitor (June 9). [Accessible at]: https://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/06/iran-asia-look-to-east-china-india-japan-oil- exports-europe.html?fbclid=IwAR0i-LJZb7GJf-OU-3B- mKXDmqr5T0F_H4xzV1ExC4kCKJsVMfV1ytHD58I#ixzz5qRhKw7r0. [Accessed] 9/6 2019. Siball, S. (2019). Afghanistan all set to get connected to India via Chabahar from Sunday. In ZeeNews (February 23). https://zeenews.india.com/india/afghanistan-all-set-to-get- connected-to-india-via-chabahar-from-sunday-2182882.html. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. SIPRI. (2019). SIPRI military expenditure database. In Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. [Accessible at]: https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex. [Accessed] 5/4 2019. SRB. (2017). Iran-Russia Rail Corridor Direct to Europe. In Silk Road Briefing (September 2017). [Accessible at]: https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2017/09/12/iran- russia-rail-corridor-direct-europe/. [Accessed]: 12/7 2019. Tabrizi, A. B. and Pantucci, R. (2016). Understanding Iran’s role in the Syrian Conflict. In Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. Tejas, A. (2015). Venezuela, Iran Sign Economic Cooperation Deals; Venezuela Signs $500M Credit Line With Iran. In International Business Times (July 27). [Accessible at]: https://www.ibtimes.com/venezuela-iran-sign-economic-cooperation-deals- venezuela-signs-500m-credit-line-iran-1986665. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. Times of Oman. [2018]. You could soon travel visa-free to Kazakhstan from Oman. In Times of Oman (May 8). [Accessible at]: https://timesofoman.com/article/133714.[Accessed] 30/8 2019. Tishehyar, M. (2019). Scientific Diplomacy: New Dimensions in Iran-Russia Cooperation. In Valdai Discussion Club (June 28). [Accessible at]: http://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/scientific-diplomacy-new-dimensions-in-iran- russia/. [Accessed]: 8/8 2019. TNA. (2019). Zarif: Iran’s Power Rests upon People. In Tasnim News Agency (February 13). [Accessible at]: https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2019/02/13/1946066/zarif- iran-s-power-rests-upon-

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people?fbclid=IwAR24Gg5n6gzMQQfXTQWNZTzuBWX2LOqMYNQmJ41AEsvp w0K3qsBhpbhQgRE. [Accessed] 21/3 2019. Tyler, P. E. (1992). U.S. strategy plan calls for ensuring no rivals develop. In New York Times (March 8). [Accessible at]: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/us- strategy-plan-calls-for-insuring-no-rivals-develop.html. [Accessed] 30/7 2019. VOA. (2010). Iran signs cooperation pact with Gulf Neighbor Qatar. In (February 23). [Accessible at]: https://www.voanews.com/world-news/middle-east- dont-use/iran-signs-cooperation-pact-gulf-neighbor-qatar. [Accessed] 27/7 2019. UN. (2012). Remarks at the 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. [Accessible at]: https://www.un.org/en/ga/president/66/pdf/statements/20120830- nonalignedmovement.pdf. [Accessed] 1/8 2019 (first accessed in 2017). —(2019). Iran Nuclear Deal Implementation - (Full Meeting) UN Security Council: Non- proliferation. In YouTube (June 27). [Accessible at]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBeHN9euldk. [Accessed] 27/6 2019. US National Archives. (2008). Defence planning guidance [Declassified under authority of the interagency security classification appeals panel. E.O. 13526, section 5.3(b)3. ISCAP No. 2008-003, document 1]. [Accessible at]: https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2008-003-docs1-12.pdf. [Accessed] 15/7 2019. Valdai. (2019). The Third Russia-Iran Dialogue: Pondering a Common Future. In Valdai Discussion Club (June 1). [Accessible at]: http://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/russia-iran-dialogue-pondering-a-common- future/. [Accessed]: 24/7. Yemma, J. (1982). Iran shakes fist at Iraq, smiles at other Arabs. In The Christian Science Monitor (June 8). [Accessible at]: https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/1982/0608/060843.html. [Accessed] 28/7 2019. Zahedi, A. (2018). Cats will dream of mice or foolish wishful thinking. [Accessible at]: http://zahedi.ch/. [Accessed] 1/3 2019. Zarif, M.J. (1999). Speech at Columbia University New York October 4. In Pirseyedi, B. (2013). Arms control and Iranian foreign policy: diplomacy of discontent. Routledge. Zarif/ORF. (2016). Special Address by Foreign Minister of Iran H.E. . In YouTube (December 3). [Accessible at]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKr_t7ckcjQ. [Accessed]: 9/8 2019. 90

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Zarif, M. J. (2018a). Let's focus on what brings us together, not what pulls us apart. On Al Jazeera (AJ English, March 26). [Accessible at]: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/focus-brings-pulls- 180326124814896.html. [Accessed] 25/7 2019. —(2018b). Read: Full transcript of FM Zarif’s speech at Tehran Security Conference. In Real Iran (May 18). [Accessible at]: http://realiran.org/read-full-transcript-of-fm-zarifs- speech-at-tehran-security-conference/. [Accessed] 20/3 2019.

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Appendix 1: List of elements

Below follow all the elements within the discursive webs as they correspond to the statements outlined in the analytical framework. The tables below do not however, explicate the overlaps between statements and the discursive webs, but are rather just a compilation of all the elements making up the enunciative fields within the discursive webs. The list totals 1052 elements.

The three discursive webs are in order of appearance violence (sharr), justice (adl) and peace (salaam).

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VIOLENCE/SHARR Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis STATEMENTS

ELEMENTS Colonial imperialism Hegemony Oppression

x x x exclusion x x x elitist x x terrorism (state/non-state)

x x x domination x autocratic

x x x coercion x totalitarian

x unilateralism

x x monologue

x x x savagery x x illusion(s), e.g. WMD

x x x animalistic instincts x x x all perceptions (as opposed to DAC) x x outdated perceptions/approaches

x x x self-interest (utilitarism) x x enslaved

x deprivation

x x discrimination

x x dependence on power

x x x logic of force

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x unipolar

x x x nihilism x x exploitation

x x x violence x x x injustice x x x ignorance x x racism

x x military solution

x x homogeneity

x despotism

x x x conflict x x territorial wars

x rivalry

x x extremism

x coalition

x arms race

x military blocks

x spheres of influence

x x x occupation x unidirectional relations

x x monopoly

x islands of affluences

x x assimilation

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x uneven distribution of wealth

x x aggression

x poverty

x illiteracy

x disease

x deprived

x dispossessed

x x polarisation

x x logic of might

x absolute truth

x paranoid illusion

x x x atrocity x despair

x frustration

x x x brutalities x x insecurity

x x x lawlessness/unlawful/abrogate x x x militarism x x unsanctioned force

x x impunity

x lack of honesty

x submission

x subservience

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x bullying

x decadence

x x transgress(ion)

x x usurping

x x x perpetual insecurity x x interference

x wasting wealth

x destructive arsenals

x instruments of death

x murdered

x bombarded

x x deny rights of others

"justice [as] victim of force x x x and aggression" x x x discriminatory x x irresponsible

x undue pressure

x threats

x whim

x x x exclusionist policies x ill-tempered

x x corruption (moral)

x x x sin x x x obedience to Satan

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x derail/ing/ed

x politicise/ing/ed

x x arrogant powers

x illegal sanctions

x incompetent

x x x lord-serf relationship x x lie

x baseless charges

x x x supremacy x x x greed x x x blind emulsion x x x consumerism x x x plundering x x plunderers of humanity

x enemies of peace

x x trample the rights

x shatter sanctity of families

x expand the shadow of threats

x bloodshed

x x rancour

x x selfishness

x x destruction

x x x immorality

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x x x deceit x bullying powers

x x corrupt powers

x x alien domineering

x lethal nuclear arms

x monopolised technologies

x x materialistic

x x selfish desires

x x domineering natures

x world domineering

x ill-wishers

x materialistic interests

x dark future

x x x inequitable x unreal wealth

x unbridled capitalism

x x despicable

x x intimidation

x x hypocrisy

x x vicious attitudes

x x inhumane policies

x x force

x barbaric attack

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x rhetorical defence

x x slavery

x x x racist goals x promote [war]

x x expansionist

x x militaristic logic

x x logic of coersion

x x liberalism

x x capitalism

x marxism the deceitful one (the lie, directed at x x x Obama) x x insatiable greed

x self-belief

x x looting

x x ignorance

x x zionism

x infected credos

x x undemocratic

x carnage

x x adventurism

x rage

x sectarian

x materialistic pleasures

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x dark ages (modern Europeanism)

x x atheism

x x x humiliation x x x ill-treatment x mass-murder

x widespread poverty

x x crisis (social and economic)

x x destitute

x x homelessness

x x x slave masters x manipulators

x lust for power

x materialistic ends

x x sinister goals

x indisputable custodians

x seeds of hate

x hostility among (people)

x x diabolical goals

x sacrileges and insults

x gunbarrels

x world-wide disorder

x inequitable

x distrust

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x malicious behaviour

x x violating rights of others

x x affluence [consumerism]

x displacement

x genocide

x gap between rich and poor

x x exploitation of people

x devastating competition

x imposition of war

x x passivity

x x x imposed poverty x resort to force

x x inhuman actions

x x survival of the fittest

x self-proclaimed centres of power

x colonialism

x x x materialism x unmoored from moral values

x x supremacy

x x x the devil x x x discriminatory x rapacious

x x x unjust world order

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x power polarities

x unbrilded hegemony

x structural barriers

x monopolisation of power

x x x prejudice x superstition

x winter of ignorance

x hostile (relations)

x deadly confrontation

x x institutionalisation of violence

x x destructive discrimination

x x decay

x x x neglect of morality x x archaic means

x ineffective

x x x subjugating others x x maintenance of old superiorities

x x x sueperior Us/Inferior Others x fanning fear and fobia

x x strategic violence

x containment policies

x x regime chanbge

x x redraw borders and frontiers

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x x xenophobia x x x faithphobic x x x islamophobic x x x shiaphobic x x x iranphobic x propagandistic

x imaginary threats

x catalogue of crimes

x catastrophic practices

x x x structural violence x apartheid

x expansionist strategies

x proxies

x humanitarian rhetoric

x x x killing of the innocent x exacerbation of violence

x ultimate inhumanity

x violent scourge

x assassination

x x unjust sanctions

x x x intrinsically inhuman x victimised

x legal jargon

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x human suffering

x mere tolerance of

x imposed structures

x status quo

x world crisis

x illegitimate pressures

x shortsighted interests

x ineffective assertion

x ineffective coalitions

x x radicalism anti-westernism (reaction to x colonialism/racism)

x funding and supporting (terrorism)

x x they need to apologize

x terrorism germinate in poverty

x x x distortion of divine teachings x x x cruelty x defamation

x islamophobic schemes

x strategic blunders

x erroneous strategic approach

x x non-peaceful approach violence spreads as a contagious x x x disease x costly experiences

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x strategic mistake

x x opprressive sqanctions

x grevious miscalculations

x incompetence

x mismangement

x maximum demands

x overt hostility

x diluded/baseless allegations

x resentment

x suspicion

x volatile peace

x x bombardment of civilians

x dangerous policies

x x x spread of insecurity x x borderless terrorism

x x methods of repression

x x borderless violent extremism

x x x savage and destructive policies x x x the grip of suffering x x apartheid policies

x divisive policies

x hate ideology

x security crisis

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x dismemberment

x religious divisions

x sectarianism

x adventurist tendencies

x irrational aspirants

x x x extremist nationalism x x x xenophobic tendencies x x x nazi disposition x artificial creation of security

x perpetrators of war

x x violate the law

x artificial crisis

x flimsy excuses

x supporting extremist

x exert pressure

JUSTICE/ADL

STATEMENTS

ELEMENTS Resistance Independence Security Sovereignty

x dialogue

x x x knowledge

x x x history

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x x x x law (rule of) x x justice

x x x equality

x x participation

x self-restraint reduction of tensions/elimination of x x tensions

x building confidence multilateralism/multipolari x x x ty movements (social, civil x x society)

x east (civilisational capital) constitutional government x x (participation)

x spirituality

x messianism

x x truth

x x United Nations

x compassion

x x co-existence

x sober analysis

x culture of peace

x spiritual health comprehensive peace (human, social, x environment)

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x defying

x collective contribution

x x democracy

x good governance innovation x (re-archaisation)

x civil society tolerance

x transparency

x x x x pluralism x x x x self-determination x non-discriminatory

x x welfare

x x prosperity

x constructive engagement

x x x disarmament

x morality

x x transformation

x x stability

x x x diplomacy

x ethics empathy intellectuals wisdom learning and listening

108

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis fairness jihad (in relation to x x x x terrorism) x x x x freedom non-selective

Millennium x Development Goals common will (individual x responsibility)

x spirited youth

x x x love

x tranquillity

x x x x hold accountable x x virtue

x x x sustainable peace

x x x x progress x x logic/al

x x human perfection

x righteousness

x justice-seeking

x x x vigilance

x x fraternity

x honesty

x purity

x the sublime

x beautiful

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x brilliant

x desirable quest for loftiness (in part x ref to adab)

x creativity

x merciful

x kindness

x zeal

x generosity splendour, bounteousness, x greatness, forgiveness

x x glory

x x insight

x amity

x goodness

x x x prosperous (prosperity)

x x x sustainable welfare absolute truth

x x x x determination x x steadfastness

x spiritual prosperity

x venerable cultures

x x defiance

x ongoing fight

x nature of humankind

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x x x self-defence x x x x lasting security x sacrifice

x x commitment

x eradicate poverty

x x uproot discrimination entezar (expectation)

x well-being

x moral obligation

x promote respect

x x x x perfection x awareness

x higher (lofty) values

x loftiness

x human values obedience to God

x fighting oppression

x x objection

x patiently (waiting)

x maturity

x serenity

x spiritual perfection

x divine mindset

x all-out participation

111

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x prosperous interrelations

x inclusive participation

x x companions

x constructive dialogue

x x freedom

x x x pure thoughts

x hope

x x x x liveliness x integrity

x x x liberty

x x lasting prosperity

x x free-minded

x x justice-seeking individuals innocent women and x children

x reparations

x x recognition of rights

x x x harmony

x x quest for happiness

collective management of the world

x cultural diversity indigenous cultures

x x social dynamism possibility of perfection

112

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x rulers love their people the beauty of (God's)

x unity of human society

x unlimited capabilities united world rule/ x x x governing the world jointly

x x friendship

x prudence

x soulful breeze of spring

x salvation

x x moderation

x x rationality

x enduring peace

x x x ballot box zero-sum games (old x x paradigm)

x x x common people

x inalienable human rights

x x x x value choice conscious of time and x x x space effective strategies and x policies objective realities

x discourse of hope foresight act responsibly/responsible x actors

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x bilaterally

x x x defend peace

x no violent solutions

x shared security removal of mutual x uncertainties

x mutual confidence equal footing recognised principles of x x x international law

x durable understanding flexible

x flexibility combating violence and x extremism

x x courage constructive dialogue

x x win-win solutions fatwa

x victory over war

x peace-seeking efforts win-win principle (new x x x x paradigm) x look to the future

x x x collective interests

x become a hub

x x x sustainable security

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x x x peaceful future recreating the international x x x x order structural cooperation on x x x x security x mutual economic ties

x x x x stability in cooperation x good-natured piety genuine democracy

x common history

x citizenship rights

x x constructive interaction

x promotion of dialogue win-win approach confidence building x x measures/mechanisms etc

x creative approach

x x x people [as] asset

x x x resilience

x positive-sum paradigm

x x right to development

x x x intra-Syrian dialogue

x x x x Astana process x intra-Yemeni talks

x collective mechanism

x meticulous guardian

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

PEACE/SALAAM

STATEMENTS

Negation Truthful- Realistic ELEMENTS Dialogue Dignity of violence ness approach x x x x x dialogue x x x x x knowledge x x x history

x x x x law (rule of)

x x x x justice

x x equality

x x x participation

x self-restraint reduction of tensions/ x x x elimination of tensions

x x x building confidence multilateralism/ x x x multipolarity movements (social, civil x x society)

x x east (civilisational capital) constitutional government x x (participation)

x spirituality

x messianism

x x truth

x x United Nations

x x x compassion

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x co-existence

x x x sober analysis

x x x culture of peace

x x x spiritual health comprehensive peace (human, social, x x x environment) x defying

x x x collective contribution

x x x x x democracy x x x x x good governance innovation (re-archaisation)

x civil society

x x tolerance

x x x transparency

x x x pluralism

x x self-determination

x x x non-discriminatory

x x welfare

x x prosperity

x x x x x constructive engagement x x disarmament

x x x morality

x x x transformation

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x stability

x x x x x diplomacy x x x x x ethics x x x x x empathy x intellectuals

x x x x x wisdom x x x x learning and listening

x x x x x fairness jihad (in relation to x terrorism)

x freedom

x non-selective

Millennium Development x Goals common will (individual x responsibility)

x x x spirited youth

x x x love tranquillity

x x hold accountable

x virtue

x x x x x sustainable peace x progress

x x x logic/al

x x x x human perfection

x x x righteousness

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x justice-seeking

x vigilance

x fraternity

x x honesty purity the sublime

x x beautiful brilliant

x desirable quest for loftiness (in part x x ref to adab)

x creativity merciful

x x x kindness zeal

x x generosity splendour, bounteousness, greatness, forgiveness glory

x x x insight

x x amity

x x goodness

x x x x x prosperous (prosperity) x x x x sustainable welfare

x absolute truth

x x x determination

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x steadfastness

x spiritual prosperity venerable cultures

x x defiance

x x x x ongoing fight

x x x nature of humankind self-defence

x x x x x lasting security x x sacrifice

x x commitment

x x x x eradicate poverty

x x uproot discrimination entezar (expectation) well-being

x x x x x moral obligation x x x promote respect

x x x x x perfection awareness

x higher (lofty) values loftiness

x human values

x x obedience to God fighting oppression

x x objection

x patiently (waiting)

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x maturity

x x x x x serenity x x x spiritual perfection

x divine mindset

x x all-out participation

x x x prosperous interrelations

x x x x x inclusive participation x x x x x companions x x x x x constructive dialogue x x x x x freedom x x x pure thoughts

x hope

x x x x x liveliness x integrity

x x x liberty

x x lasting prosperity

x x free-minded

x justice-seeking individuals innocent women and x x children

x x reparations

x x recognition of rights

x x x x harmony

x quest for happiness

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

collective management of x the world

x x cultural diversity

x x x x indigenous cultures

x x x x x social dynamism x x possibility of perfection

x x x rulers love their people

x x the beauty of (God's) unity of human society unlimited capabilities united world rule/ x x governing the world jointly

x x x x friendship

x prudence

x x soulful breeze of spring

x x x x x salvation x x x moderation

x x x x x rationality x x x x enduring peace

x x x ballot box zero-sum games x x x x (old paradigm)

x common people

x inalienable human rights

x x x x x value choice

122

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis conscious of time and x x space effective strategies and x x x x policies

x objective realities

x x discourse of hope

x foresight act responsibly/responsible x x x actors

x bilaterally

x x defend peace

x x x x x no violent solutions x x x shared security removal of mutual x x x uncertainties

x x x mutual confidence

x x x equal footing recognised principles of x x x x international law

x x x durable understanding

x flexible

x flexibility combating violence and x x x x extremism

x courage

x x x constructive dialogue

x win-win solutions

x fatwa

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x x victory over war

x x x x peace-seeking efforts win-win principle (new x x x x x paradigm) x x x look to the future

x x x x collective interests

x x become a hub

x x x x x sustainable security x x x x x peaceful future recreating the international x x x x x order structural cooperation on x x x x x security x x x mutual economic ties

x x x x x stability in cooperation x good-natured piety

x genuine democracy

x common history

x x x x citizenship rights

x x x x constructive interaction

x x x x promotion of dialogue

x win-win approach confidence building x x x measures/mechanisms etc

x creative approach

x x people [as] asset

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

x resilience

x positive-sum paradigm

x x right to development

x x x intra-Syrian dialogue

x x x x x Astana process x x x intra-Yemeni talks

x x x collective mechanism

x x meticulous guardian

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Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

Appendix 2: List of speeches

UNGA speeches by year:

UNGA Year Speaker President reference 1 A/34/PV.21 1979 Ebrahim Yazdi51 52 2 A/53/PV.33 1980 Ali Shams Ardakani53 Seyyed 3 A/36/PV.26 1981 Mir-Hossein Mousavi54 55 4 A/37/PV.27 1982 Ali-Akbar Velayati56 Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei 5 A/38/PV.13 1983 Ali-Akbar Velayati Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei 6 A/39/PV.15 1984 Ali-Akbar Velayati Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei 7 A/40/PV.20 1985 Ali-Akbar Velayati Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei 8 A/41/PV.19 1986 Ali-Akbar Velayati Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei 9 A/42/PV.6 1987 Seyyed Ali Hosseini Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei Khamenei 10 A/43/PV.14 1988 Ali-Akbar Velayati Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei 11 A/44/PV.13 1989 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali

51 Minister of Foreign Affairs, April-November 1979. 52 The Office of President was established in 1980, hence in 1979 Iran was initially still a monarchy (under Shah ), thereafter ruled by an interim government headed by Spiritual Leader and Prime Minister , who resigned in November 1979. 53 IRI Ambassador to Kuwait at the time. 54 Minister of Foreign Affairs (1981). 55 The office was empty at the date of the UNGA opening session in 1981 (5 October), due to th e assassination of IRI’s second president, Mohammad-Ali Rajai on August 30 1981. The third president of IRI, Seyyed Ali Hossein Khamenei, took office on October 9 1981. 56 Minister of Foreign Affairs (1981-1997). 126

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

12 A/45/PV.5 1990 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 13 A/46/PV.5 1991 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 14 A/47/PV.5 1992 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 15 A/48/PV.14 1993 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 16 A/49/PV.5 1994 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 17 A/50/PV.5 1995 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 18 A/51/PV.4 1996 Ali-Akbar Velayati Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 19 A/52/PV.6 1997 Kamal Kharrazi57 Seyyed 20 A/53/PV.8 1998 Seyyed Mohammad Seyyed Mohammad Khatami Khatami 21 A/54/PV.12 1999 Kamal Kharrazi Seyyed Mohammad Khatami 22 A/55/PV.16 2000 Kamal Kharrazi Seyyed Mohammad Khatami 23 A/56/PV.44 2001 Seyyed Mohammad Seyyed Mohammad Khatami Khatami 24 A/57/PV.9 2002 Kamal Kharrazi Seyyed Mohammad Khatami 25 A/58/PV.12 2003 Kamal Kharrazi Seyyed Mohammad Khatami 26 A/59/PV.9 2004 Kamal Kharrazi Seyyed Mohammad Khatami 27 A/60/PV.10 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 28 A/61/PV.11 2006 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 29 A/62/PV.5 2007 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 30 A/63/PV.6 2008 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 31 A/64/PV.4 2009 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 32 A/65/PV.12 2010 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 33 A/66/PV.15 2011 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

57 Minister of Foreign Affairs (1997-2005). 127

Siavosh Bigonah Global Politics Master Thesis

34 A/67/PV.9 2012 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 35 A/68/PV.6 2013 Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani 36 A/69/PV.9 2014 Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani 37 A/70/PV.13 2015 Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani 38 A/71/PV.14 2016 Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani 39 A/72/PV.7 2017 Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani 40 A/73/PV.6 2018 Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani

128