Re-reading the Social and Material of Relations between Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia in the “Sazandegi Government”

Document Type : Original Independent Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor at Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch

Abstract

Following the Islamic Revolution, Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia entered a decade of conflict and confrontation as a recurring pattern in their relations. But identity, geopolitical, and international developments in the 1990s resulted in a change in the recurring pattern governing their relations. The purpose of this paper is to re-read the relations of Tehran and Riyadh in the post-war period in order to analyze “how and due to which causes, the two countries moved from conflict and confrontation to improving their relations”. The question in this paper is “what factors caused the dominance of the co-existence pattern instead of conflict in Iran - Saudi relations between 1989 and 1997?” The finding of this paper, which is a descriptive - analytic study, and uses two approaches of social (constructivism) and material (realism), is that “the social structure governing the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 1989 – 1997 led to an improvement in the anarchic international and regional environment, which had caused suspicions and mistrust of the two countries. Moreover, the change in the hostility between the two countries, caused the co-existence of them based on non-conflict of identity, and the transformation of geopolitical conflict into competition, despite the structural pressures.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

  1. Abir, M. (1993). Saudi Arabia: Government, Society and the Gulf Crisis, London: Routledge.
  2. Akhavan Kazemi, B. (1994). An Overview of the Relations Between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the last two Decades, Tehran: Publications of the Islamic Tablighat Organization. (In Persian)
  3. Buzan, B. (2010). The United States and Great Powers: Global Policies in the 21st Century, Tehran: Strategic Studies Research Institute. (In Persian)
  4. Chubin, S. Tripp, C. (1996). Iran-Saudi Arabia Relations and Regional Order, London: Oxford University Press.
  5. Conesa, P. (2019). The Saudi Terror Machine, Translated by Azam Vershuchifard and Siamak Delara, Tehran: Parse. (In Persian)
  6. Cordesman, A. H. (2003). Saudi Arabia Enters the Tewnty-First Century: The Political, Foreign Policy, Economics, and Energy Dimensions, Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
  7. Daheshyar, H\. (2013). Saudi Arabia: A regional Actor in the Context of Special Relations, Foreign Relations Quarterly, No. 3. 41-66. (In Persian)
  8. Dehghani Firoozabadi, S\. (2009). The Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran: Semt. (In Persian)
  9. Ehtashami, A. (1999). Iran's Foreign Folicy During the Construction Period, Translated by Ebrahim Motaghi and Zohreh Poustinchi, Tehran: Islamic Revolution Records Center. (In Persian)
  10. Furtig, H. (2002). Iran's Rivalry with Saudi Arabia Between the Gulf Wars, Berkshire: Garnet Publishing Limited.
  11. Furtig, H. (2007). Conflict and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf: The Interregional Order and US Policy, Middle East Journal, Vol.61(4). 627-640.
  12. Hashemi, A. (2011). The end of defense, the beginning of reconstruction (Memoirs of Hashemi Rafsanjani, 1367), Tehran: Ma'arif El-Ghebanal Publishing. (In Persian)
  13. Hashemi Rafsanjani, A. A. (1989). The Text of the Speech of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the Persian Gulf International Conference, Foreign Policy, No. 3. 393-402. (In Persian)
  14. Hashemi Rafsanjani, A. A. (2014). The author's interview with the former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 10, May 2014. (In Persian)
  15. Heywood, A. (2019). Global Plolitics, Translated by Masoud Mousavi Shafaee, Tehran: Samt Publishing. (In Persian)
  16. Indyk, M. (2004). US Policy Priorities in the Gulf: Challenges and Choices, in: International Interests in the Gulf Region, Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research.
  17. Khamenei, S. A. (1993). Answer to Mr. Rayshahri's letter Regarding Preventing the Saudi Government from Holding the Ritual of Acquittal of Aolytheists, Leader, at: http://farsi.khamenei.ir/message-content?id=2670. (In Persian)
  18. S. (1997). Threat perception and military planning in Iran: credible scenarios of conflict and opportunities for confidence building, in: Eric H. Arnett, Military Capacity and the Risk of War: China, India, Pakistan, and Iran, USA: Oxford University Press.
  19. Mearsheimer, J. J. (1995). A realist reply, International Security, Vol.20(1). 82-93.
  20. Mearsheimer, J., Walt, S. M. (2009). The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Translated by Reza Kamshad, Tehran: Farzan Rooz. (In Persian)
  21. Mohammadi, M. (2008). The Future of the International System and the Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran: Publications of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (In Persian)
  22. Nabavi, M. (2004). A Re-Reading of Iran's Diplomacy in the Second Sepublic, Iran's Foreign Policy During Mr. Hashemi's Presidency, Strategy, No. 34. 159-202. (In Persian)
  23. Nawfal, M. (1998). The Place of Arab-Iranian Relations in the Islamic World, in: Khair El-din Haseeb, Arab-Iranian Relations, Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies.
  24. Ramezani, R. (2001). Analytical framework for examining the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Translated by Alireza Tayeb, Tehran: Ney Publishing. (In Persian)
  25. Riedel, B. (2021). Remembering the Khobar Towers bombing, Brookings, June 21, 2021. at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/06/21/remembering-the-khobar-towers-bombing/
  26. Tajik, M. (2004). Foreign Policy: The Arena of lack of Decision and Tact, Tehran: Farhang Gofteman. (In Persian)
  27. Tajik, M., Dehghani Firouzabadi, S. J. (2003). Patterns of Exporting the Revolution in Iran's Foreign Policy Discourses, Strategy, No. 27. (In Persian)
  28. Terrill, W. Andrew. (2011). The Saudi-Iranian Rivalry and the Future of Middle East Security, Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute.
  29. Waltz, K. N. (2008). Realism and International Politics, New York: Routledge.
  30. Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of International Politics, New York: Random House.
  31. Wendt, A. (1995), Constructing International Politics, International Security, 20(1). 71-81.
  32. Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics