محمدرضا مجیدی

In the wake of US withdrawal of Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, and re-imposition of sanctions, Iranian policymakers came down gradually in favor of cooperation with the East, chief among them China, culminating in the signing of 25-year Iran-China and the adoption of Iran’s Look East Strategy in 2021. Considering the changing flux in Iran’s diplomacy toward the regional cooperation and ever-increasing Sino-Iranian rapprochement, the main question of this contribution is about the effect of Sino-Iranian rapprochement on India, one of Iran’s biggest Asian trading partners. The main hypothesis states that Sino-Iranian rapprochement has led India to expand the scope of its connectivity projects through Iran, throwing spoke in the wheel of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in South and Central Asia. Constructivist Institutionalism (CI) developed by Hay was adopted as the theoretical framework. The methodology used for this research is based upon qualitative methodology and discourse analysis to focus on Iran and India relations in the context of Iran’s Look East strategy. Our findings indicate that Indian policy makers are following the Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam principle in their engagement with Iran, seeking to increase Iran-India ties in the face of Chinese competition with long-term strategic and security deal. As part of India’s civilizational role in the Central Asia and a response to growing Chinese footprints in the region, India has undertaken certain concrete measures such as institutionalization of India-Central Asia summit on a multi-lateral framework and inclusion of Iran’s Chabahar port in the International North-South Corridor. The research findings reveal that the corporate remains the weak link in the chain of the state-temple-corporate complex of the Hindu nationalist BJP in relation to Iran. India is also set to lock in cooperation with Iran through long-term strategic deal, institutionalizing security cooperation, and strengthening the private sector participation in Chabahar project.

The European countries have adopted a particular policy and manner to conflict with Muslims in their countries. These policies are classified into three behavioral patterns of British, German, and French. The British model is cultural pluralism, the German is Muslims’ integration in German society, and the French are melting melt pot. In their belief, Muslims must be dissolved in French culture and eliminated their religious identity. Other European countries follow one of these three models. The present study aimed to answer the following questions: ‘What effect have these strategies and patterns had on the living conditions of Muslims and the whole society of that country?’ ‘Were the approaches a plan or practical?’ ‘Which policies have been more successful quickly or strictly in confronting Islamic extremism (Takfiri terrorism) and Secular extremism (European terrorism)?’ ‘What was the practical result of these approaches in the Western European countries' social and security conditions?’

This paper tries to examine the role and position of parliamentary diplomacy in today's international relations with a brief review of the history of diplomacy, its evolution in the span of time, and the formation of new types of diplomacy. The paper also seeks to answer questions about the role of parliaments in today's international relations as well as the position of parliamentary diplomacy within the framework of regional and international cooperation. However, it is generally opined that parliamentary diplomacy is not competing with traditional state-oriented diplomacy as parallel diplomacy. Rather, by emphasizing the continuation of the Westphalian model of nation-states in today's international system, it serves as a complementary tool to state diplomacy in favor of securing the national interests of countries.

The transmission of values in a country like Iran, which has a society and political system based on religion, has a twofold importance. Cinema in our country can be improved by localizing it - as one of the most basic and most impressive media of the modern world- based on the Islamic Revolution values and principles. It is evident that the continuous monitoring and evaluation of products in this area becomes more serious. The present study is an attempt to analyze the content of one of the cinematic products and evaluate different dimensions of religiosity used in it. By making use of the five dimension model of religiosity of Glock and Stark (doctrinal, ritual, experiential, cognitive, and the one related to outcome) and by implementing the quantitative content analysis, the thrust of this research is to evaluate the dimensions and categories of religiosity used in the "The Gold and the Copper" movie through a descriptive-analytic approach. The main question of the article is: What dimensions of religiosity lie in this film and how have they been reflected in it? The results illustrate that the ritual and doctrinal dimensions (45/7% and 29/5% respectively) have the highest degree of contribution of the religious categories used in the film, while the cognitive dimension has the lowest degree (7%).