Islamic Republic’s Two-Tier Foreign Policy towards the US From Suspicious in the Mid-term to Proactive in the Long-term

Hopes for changes in Iran’s foreign policy towards the United States (US from now) have been dashed times and again. It is argued in this article that ideational and situational factors are responsible for this. Ideationally speaking, the lagging dialectical gap between otherwise two complementary factors of the Islamic Republic’s ideological disposition and perspective and Iran’s mutually strategic interests with the US is the single most contributing factor in this respect. As long as the prospects for striking a “correspondence discourse” out of this “dialectical components” (ideological and strategic outlooks) remain uncertain and opaque, realistic hopes for change in Iran-US relations would remain unfulfilled. Situationally speaking, the US also needs to reconsider its anachronistic approach as well as the previous patron-client paradigm in its relation with Iran. Moreover, circumstantial events also play a significant role in tilting the weight in favor of one or the other factor. Notwithstanding the on-and-off aggravating ideological confrontation, the mutually-shared strategic interests of both countries have times and again served to ease and mitigate the post-1979 relations between them within the limits of a practically reigning “cold war.” Based upon both mutually-shared strategic interests between Iran and US and the content analysis of Iranian officials’ positions and pronouncements, it is argued here that the future foreign policy of the Islamic Republic vs. the US will unfold in a two-tiered manner; a mid-term suspicious and a long-term proactive foreign policy. Considering the high costs of lost opportunities emanating from the gap just mentioned, change in bilateral relations seems a necessity – and for both sides. That said, the main contribution of this article is to attempt a workable conceptual framework whereby the necessity of change from a mid-term “suspicious outlook” to a long-term “proactive cooperation” towards the US is portrayed.

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