Author Description

This book is based on understanding the foreign policy of Iran, a country that has been the locus of a political storm in West Asia for the last forty years since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. There are very few nations in the world that have experienced a significant number of domestic and foreign policy challenges and have survived by bypassing them. Iran has emerged as one of these nations. These challenges have stemmed largely from two variables. First, Iran's revolutionary rhetoric and theocratic form of government, following the pluralist system of governance, along with the need to protect its regime and state structure through various national and regional security-building manoeuvrings. Second, the reactions of the regional and global actors-essentially Saudi Arabia and the US-that have treated Iran as an oddity and have strived to protect their interests considering Iran to be a destabilising factor in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. These two variables have, in turn, reinforced each other, eventually resulting in a destabilising region with a resurgent Iran. As a key player in the turbulent region, Iran has remained in news for the last four decades. The ever-changing dynamics of the region along with the presence of large amount of hydrocarbon resources has dominated both Iran's regional and foreign policy. Being targeted as the revolutionary power after becoming the first theocratic state in the Persian Gulf following a revolution (1979) and later labelled as one of the 'axis of evil' states, Iran has managed to survive tough international sanctions. The thaw in the US-Iran relations after the signing of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 and the subsequent easing of international sanctions paved way for Iran's integration into international economy. It also led to its enhanced engagement with its neighbours with in the region, extended neighbours in adjacent regions as well as with major powers such as Russia, China and the