Russia

The expansion of NATO to the East under the policies of Atlanticism is one of the current issues of international relations, which has a lot to think about for the countries involved in this policy, their neighbors and the international order. After the expansion of NATO to the east, what will happen in the spheres of influence of NATO and the neighboring countries of those spheres and the conditions created, causes predictions in this field; One of them is the evaluation of the feasibility of cooperation between China and Russia with their own special conditions against this action, that is, Atlanticism. After experiencing many ups and downs in China-Russia relations, these two countries have gradually expanded their comprehensive cooperation since the mid-1990s. In the meantime, the expansion of NATO to the east is one of the important political, military and security issues that has led to the expression of common concern. And at the same time, the cooperation and positions of the two countries have come closer, especially towards the policies and actions of America and even Europe. Russia's concern about the presence of NATO in its borders and China's concern about the close military cooperation of the West with Taiwan have caused the two countries to work harder for mutual cooperation and their development fields. The concept of new Atlanticism provides a framework for analyzing security and normative challenges facing Europe and the world. This work and many similar works emphasize the fact that the behavior of America and its allies in the international system has become the basis for the creation of various coalitions and alliances. From the perspective of this research and emphasizing the threat balance theory, when the hegemon country and its allies create threats, or show threatening behaviors; They will create coalitions and alliances. In this article, an attempt was made to discuss the feasibility of expanding cooperation between China and Russia against Atlanticism by using the theoretical framework of threat balance. And the topic of these cooperation was examined according to the concepts, general capabilities such as (population, economic power, military power, etc.), geographical proximity, offensive capabilities and offensive intentions from the perspective of the threat balance theory.

This article discusses the political initiatives of certain states to establish a special tribunal for the prosecution of the crime of aggression which was allegedly committed within the Ukraine situation. The article raises questions about the feasibility of establishing such a court, given that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has within its mandate the possibility to try an aggression case. However, in this article it will be explained why the ICC is not a viable option in this regard, while a new Ukraine tribunal also creates various legal obstacles. The article suggests that the political motivations behind this proposal should be balanced against these legal obstacles, including procedural obstacles related to the crime of aggression and functional immunities, and how proceedings should be conducted in the presence or absence of the accused. The article concludes that a thorough assessment of these legal and procedural considerations must be made before deciding to establish a special Ukraine tribunal.

Russia's military attack on Ukraine has had profound consequences not only for the Middle East, but also for the world. The political-security relations of the two countries, have been affected by this war. Since the beginning of Russia's military operation in Ukraine, Tehran has accepted Moscow's rationale for this attack and has shown its political support at the United Nations General Assembly, but Iran has been cautious in fully supporting this war. Iran's approach regarding the war in Ukraine is important in two ways. First, Iran's orientation towards this war affects Tehran's relations with Moscow. Second, this orientation affects Iran's interests in the international system. For this reason, the main question of this article is "What was Iran's attitude towards the war in Ukraine and how did it affect the relations between Tehran and Moscow?" The hypothesis of the authors is that "Iran's approach towards the war in Ukraine has been cautious - it has neither officially condemned nor supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine - this policy is aimed at maintaining and continuing the relations between the two countries. The purpose of this article is to examine the orientations of the Islamic Republic of Iran towards the war in Ukraine and its effect on the country's relations with Russia. The authors' method in this research is qualitative with a descriptive-analytical approach.

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.

This paper is an attempt to reconsider the legacy of universalism of traditional empires from the perspective of systems theory. In the West, the system ideas were already present in ancient Greek/Roman philosophy and developed further since the Renaissance within the domain of natural sciences (anatomy, mechanics or astronomy), whereas they did not develop as much in social sciences and particularly in politics, which lacks a holistic understanding. In the universal empires of the East (such as Iran, China and Russia) the system paradigm developed from the political life of centralized statehood. The core concept of the traditional imperial universalism was a particular understanding of “justice”, not as equality or absence of coercion, but as a certain form of social order. As the Chinese philosopher Xunzi and the Persian philosopher Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, noted, “justice” is primarily an “equilibrium”, that is a way of maintaining optimal interrelationships between different aspects of society within a single political whole. Traditional imperial universalism understood “just order” as a centralized hierarchical order. However, the current state of the systems approach and the complexity theory allows the reconsideration of the legacy of traditional universalism as the principle of totality of organizational connections and hierarchies of “systemic elements”, in the terminology of Russian philosopher, Alexander Bogdanov. It is concluded that the three Eastern thinkers share similar systematic understanding of “justice” as a hierarchically-arranged political order, coordinated on the basis of a single plan, which permits to maintain a dynamic balance.

Regional Order and Maximum Pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran, an American NarrativeAbstractOver time, various foreign policy and International Relations scholars have offered different themes and arguments on foreign policy. The necessity to review these themes and definitions are due to the continuity of foreign policy as a continuum, in which foreign policy and its different terms take shape and are formed. This study conducts a research on an American perspective of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, which was a new term and policy enforced by the Trump administration. It reviews different tools of American statecraft and argues that the maximum pressure campaign was a multilayered hybrid warfare with repercussions. In this regard, historically, the American security arrangement in Western Asia has undergone various stages. In the 1970s it was based on the Twin Pillars of Nixon while later on it was based on confrontation which was adopted under different terms such as dual containment and containment. In this study through a contextual analysis it is deducted that the campaign against Iran was an American example of multi-layered hybrid warfare. In addition, it is argued that this multi-layered hybrid warfare created an unstable region. This development alongside the American pivot to Asia has created a regional arrangement which involves great power competition and is inclined towards Chinese and Russian intervention and mediation. Thus an increased third party foothold and a destabilized regional order are the outcomes of the maximum campaign, which ostensibly contradict the American pivot to Asia.