Western Asia

Due to both internal and external factors, Western Asia has long been suffering from security tribulations and political instability. The institution of various military and militia groups in the region in the absence of powerful central governments is the leading cause of most crises in Western Asia. The development of such security and military interactions outside the sovereignty framework paves the way for foreign interventions, making the region unstable and insecure. Working at times as proxy agents, these groups take action in the absence of a powerful stable central government in short term, and set the ground for sustained unrest, dispersion and the development of irresponsible armed groups in long term. These groups proliferate when the central governments lack the necessary persuasive power or lose the ability to manage crises and to exercise exclusive power for reasons such as lack of effective military power, disagreement over the quality of interaction with opposition groups, losing the monopoly of military power, intervention of regional or transboundary powers, high financial and organizing abilities of the militia, etc. This article is based on the hypothesis that the development and continuous growth of non-state armed groups stems from various internal and external reasons, causing security crisis in the concerned countries. The most crucial way to end these crises is empowering the central government through national cohesiveness, consensus, and the exclusive practice of hard power based on the law.

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.