مطالب

In the past four decades, the US-Iran relations have been hostile, especially after Donald Trump took office as president in 2017. Since 1979, Washington's official policy toward Iran has been predicated on containment, push-back, and change of behavior. However, Iran usually perceives the US policy regarding itself in terms of regime change or metamorphosis. The United States has countered Iran through coercive diplomacy, crippling sanctions, military blockade, delegitimization, isolation, and demonization. The present paper aims to investigate the antagonism between the two countries in Donald Trump's administration. The main reasons behind Trump's maximum pressure campaign against Iran and Iran’s perception of this attitude constitute the main research questions addressed in this paper. The findings show that the two countries have different understandings of their hostilities. Although the US preference in Trump’s era for Iran was regime change, it would settle for a non-challenging or so-called a normal Iran. But Iran perceived the US policy as undermining its independence, identity, and existence. In fact Iran perceived Trump’s gesture on negotiation or making new deal as just a propaganda show. This paradigmatic different outlooks has blocked diplomacy. The present paper, through a descriptive-analytic method, elaborates on this antinomy mainly from Iranian side.

The relationship between the United States and the United Arab Emirates is becoming increasingly complex and strategic. The two countries’ strategic partnership in the fields of security, military, political, and intelligence has also acted as a facilitating variable in this field. The UAE acts as the US financial arm in support of institutionalization and democratization and promotion of liberal values in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and, Palestine. The article’s main question is that how and why the United Arab Emirates and the United States aretrying to contain Iran in the Middle East? In this regard, using the theoretical propositions of aggressive realism, the hypothesis is that the United States has defined a unique role for the UAE in transferring responsibility to regional actors to decrease Washington's balance cost in the Middle East and North Africa. The method used in the present article is based on a descriptive-analytical approach and the data is collected through library researches, interviews with experts, and reliable internet sources.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has been affected by economic sanctions imposed by Western countries especially the U.S. Since 2006 and with increasing Iranian nuclear standoff with the P5+1 group, the United Nations has frequently imposed economic and financial sanctions against Iran. As a result of these international restrictions and their management by an international organization, Iran's exports have been heavily reduced. Given the sanctions on the oil industry in Iran and the lack of a comprehensive model of export performance of Iranian petroleum products in the sanctions period, this research can help improve and develop this industry in international markets. The research method is phenomenological and the statistical population includes export and marketing managers and oil industry experts. Non-probable sampling and snowball sampling methods were used in this research. In this qualitative study, semistructured in-depth interviews were used to gather information, and 7 in-depth interviews on saturation law were conducted. Structural, internal, interpretive, and descriptive validity were used for validation. For surveying reliability, revision while coding and surveying by another informed person were used to ensure correct coding. This research uses a qualitative study to determine the effect of returning sanctions on the export performance model of Iranian petroleum products. After open, pivotal, and selective coding and the use of Atlas quality software, the background of Iran's oil products export performance in sanctions is market orientation, company resources, marketing mix, macro environment, and items of Iranian oil products export performance in sanction includes: financial performance,customer satisfaction and customer retention in sanction situation. Most of the previous studies have focused onpositivism and quantitative research methodology while we used the qualitative and mixed-method in this research. 

The depth and extension of Iran’s controversial connections with its proxies have caught eyes and thoughts. While much ink has been spilled to Iran's regional policy, the majority of these analyses, either intuitively or deliberately, build their explanation on the so-called ‘Persian-Shia offensive intentions’. Conversely, the present paper seeks the roots of Iran's regional policy in its specific geography and history. From this perspective, Iran’s regional policy is inseparable from its geopolitical strategies. To shed light on these strategies, the paper begins with the rise of the Persian Achaemenes until the establishment of the Islamic Republic, focusing on major driving forces behind Iran’s regional policy and strategies. The paper elaborates on a foundational concept of ‘strategic loneliness’, as Iran’s permanent feature, by highlighting the country’s curse of geography and its long-standing historical insecurity. In following, it shows the consequential impact of Iran’s strategic loneliness for the country’s non-state foreign policymaking strategic connections with military non-state actors—in the containment of its regional enemies. The paper ultimately argues that while this policy has kept Iran’s national integrity and security while entrapped the country in a durable ‘geopolitical predicament’ and deepened regional crisis in the Middle East.