World Sociopolitical Studies

Following the invasion of the allied forces in September 1941, chaos and crisis characterized the Iranian socio-political life for more than a decade. The “issue of oil” emerged in such an environment. First a round of negotiation began in order to “regain the right of the people to Southern oil”. The initial demand of the Iranian government was to acquire more benefits; at the same time, however, outside the government, another approach was being formed, in which a political understanding of the oil issue was predominant with a less materialist understanding of the stakes. As a result, the oil issue could be seen as either economic or political; two discourses, though both were more or less inspired by anti colonialist discourses of the time, emerged and each sought hegemony. This article seeks to reveal the way in which discursive struggle emerged and the way in which a shift to the political discourse made significant political changes possible. Its main argument is that the discursive conflict in a society, where national identity was a matter of contest, led to a fundamental change in the representation of the issue and, in the course of time, even the identities of the political actors evolved. It was when this discursive conflict led to the hegemony of the political understanding of the oil issue that Razmara’s administration became delegitimized and the national movement for oil nationalization acquired legitimacy.

Electoral geography is often considered a major branch of behavioral geography, which takes into account certain political functionalities. This analysis is particularly important in the case of Iran, where political behaviors and social, behavioral, and geographical complexities take on a unique form. This in turn certainly impacts the combination and function of different political institutions in Iran, especially in the case of presidential elections, at various local, regional, and national scales. In this light, the present study proceeds with an exploratory analysis of spatial data on different electoral sectors to find a balanced spatial division (zoning) of Iran based on principles of electoral geography, which also provides certain indications into existing spatial inequalities. The analysis is based on the assumption that concepts of electoral geography-consisting of a diverse range of spatial-political aspects of election-integrated with exploratory analyses, may prove helpful in establishing fair elections in Iran. The results of this study reveal that the distribution of election votes shows a significantly positive general spatial autocorrelation, which is indicative of the spatial clustering of votes in Iran. Regarding the relationship between the distribution of votes and social and economic variables, votes tallied for Rouhani had positive and significant correlations with factors of relative population aged 25 to 64, relative student population studying at higher education, the ratio of university educated population, unemployment rates, rental rates, housing quality, and the rate of urbanization in all cities. However, for Raeesi, the analysis of the votes indicates a positive and significant correlation between relative population aged 0 to 24, population above 64, employment rates, ratio of households with disabled members, house ownership and ruralization.

The first paragraph of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) recognizes the right to freedom of expression and prohibits party states from any arbitrary interference. The second paragraph, emphasizing that exercising this right comes with certain duties and responsibilities, authorizes the party states to restrict this right for their citizens if the specified conditions are met. One such condition is achieving one of the legitimate aims listed therein. The courts of Turkey, as a member state bound by the ECHR, have invoked these goals to justify their decisions regarding the restriction of citizens' right to freedom of expression. Nevertheless, convicted individuals who appeal these rulings before the European Court of Human Rights argue that no such legitimate aim existed, and that their right to freedom of expression has been violated. This study investigates the primary challenges faced by Turkish courts in invoking legitimate aims as justifications for restricting freedom of expression. It also elucidates the precise meaning and conditions for the eligibility of these goals based on the interpretation provided by the European Court of Human Rights.

After establishing its jurisdiction in the case of the violation of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between Iran and the United States (hereafter U.S.) on February 3, 2021, the International Court of Justice (hereafter ICJ) took a stride towards the Merits stage. In the event of a final judgment and the failure of the U.S. government to comply, the primary question that was raised was the following: What are Iran's options if the U.S. does not act upon the final decision of the ICJ? This article endeavors to address this question. The research methodology employed in this article is descriptive-analytical; through document analysis of the Court's decisions, international treaties, and relevant books and articles, specific findings have been derived. The research results indicate that Iran's options can be within the framework of the United Nations (hereafter UN) or beyond it. Options within the UN framework are predominantly theoretical, lacking effective enforcement mechanisms due to the existing power structures, including the veto power in the Security Council (hereafter UNSC), thereby lacking a guarantee of proper implementation. These options tend to be idealistic. On the other hand, options outside the UN framework, such as bargaining power and countermeasures for Iran, carry a realist aspect, allowing Iran to leverage them for the assertion of its rights.

The issue of human rights has been at the center of the world community for seventy years, since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Although it is difficult to define the concept of human rights, researchers believe that this concept can be extracted from those rules and norms that have initially been recognized by the majority of UN members in the form of declarations, statements, treaties, conventions, and Performance of Opinio Juris, and second, affect the behavior and conduct of political entities. The current study investigates the definition of human rights after the events of September 11, 2001. This review article argues that the concept of human rights was initially a general concept, but it evolved over time into specialized areas, such that in the third millennium and after September 11, 2021, security-related human rights issues have become more important than before, and different groups and minorities received more special attention. On the other hand, environmental and health-related human rights issues have emerged as compelling issues of the present, which have further broadened the scope of human rights.

When the war broke out in Ukraine, this eastern European country started a successful resistance that pinned down the Russian army in many regions and created a stalemate that has sparked a war of attrition not only in Ukraine, but also on social media territories in other political spheres. This study investigates the way in which Ukraine war is represented -or to be more precise, fought- in the Iranian X. Data mining methods were employed to search, find and extract posts including “Ukraine war” -or “جنگ اوکراین” in Persian. Our main question was, how did Iranian X users position themselves with regard to war in Ukraine? Using Python, a popular social media research tools, 2027 relevant posts were extracted to show the way in which Iranian users position themselves with regard to Ukraine war. Results revealed that the two Iranian main political factions  -namely Reformists and Fundamentalists- see this war not as a war of other countries, but that of their own. The pro-Western Reformists favor the Ukrainian side of the war and the pro-Eastern Fundamentalists favor the Russian side of the war. They fight on social media as though the Ukrainian war is their own war.