Saraiva, Rui Faro

The overthrow of the Shah Reza Pahlavi's monarchy in 1979, allowed the emergence of a hybrid regime in which the precepts and standards of 12th Imam Shiite Muslim clerics prevail along with republican institutions. The new political regime incorporated a new internal order endowed with elective and nonelective institutions, in which often the boundary between the secular and the religious cannot be distinguished. Explaining Iran's foreign policy raises an immediate question: is Iran's foreign policy based on purely geopolitical and geostrategic interests, through a realist paradigm, or is it, simultaneously or distinctively, shaped by an idealistic element related to Islam? It is legitimate to question whether there is an Islamic way of conducting a foreign policy and what distinguishes Iran's actions from secular states in international politics. The balance of ideology and pragmatism seems to be one of the most persistent and intricate elements of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy. This is one of the most important features to consider when developing a conceptual and analytical framework to explain two apparently conflicting elements in the Iranian foreign policy

Osaka University Knowledge Archive

The post 1979 Iranian Foreign Policy : the Emergence of Theocratic Pragmatism?

http://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/11094/25996/1/osipp_031_145.pdf

The post 1979 Iranian Foreign Policy : the Emergence of Theocratic Pragmatism?

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