Kukreja, Dhiraj

Abstract
Countries that consume large amounts of energy have been coping with oil prices hovering around $110 per barrel since the beginning of 2011, as most of the developed and developing nations have been trying to emerge from financial and debt crises. A sustained period of lower oil prices has provided relief. Major oil producers on the other hand, have grown accustomed to high oil prices, using them to prop up their national budgets. Sustained low oil prices are now making these oil producers to rethink their spending. Just how positive would be the effects, will depend on how long the price of oil continues to maintain the present levels.
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Ollapally, Deepa M

Abstract
Events in the post-Cold War world, especially in former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, are forcing international relations scholars to take socio-culturally based identity factors more seriously. International relations frameworks have generally been ill equipped for such analysis, in no small part a function of the resistance of analysts themselves. Samuel Huntington’s widely cited “Clash of Civilizations” is thus challenge at various various including theory, methodology, and preferences. In this article, I argue that neither the dominant realist paradigm nor its familiar critiques are sufficient and competent to analyze the dynamics of identity in the international system. I attempt what might be termed a “plausibility probe” to point out the importance of taking up factors which have hitherto been neglected by realists as well as their challengers.

Shahidani, Mehdi Hedayati, and Roman Vladimirovich Penkovtsev

Abstract
Values and elements of popular culture play an important role in shaping and implementing the foreign policy of Iran. In this paper, using content analysis and after explaining the characteristics of Iranian identity, the author seeks to investigate the implications of Iranian social beliefs on foreign policy. In other words, the author sets out to explore whether the perceptions and attitudes of Iranian identity at different historical periods have been the basis according to which Iranian politicians have followed the same model or not? For this purpose, three major components, the influence in the regional area, xenophobia, and conspiracy theory that are complementary in nature, have been selected. Research findings illustrate that the long history of societies like Iran has been the raison d’etre for the recurrence of social beliefs and values in various political eras of such societies.

Ichimasa, Sukeyuki

Abstract
While the spotlight has focused on multilateral economic sanctions in the post-Cold War era as a non- military means of exercising force by the United Nations, there has been a long history of unilateral economic sanctions by individual states exercising their powers on international politics in order to satisfy their national interests and security needs. Regarding the nuclear issues of North Korea and Iran, various discussions have been raised for many years over the roles and effects of international economic sanctions. Unilateral economic sanctions have been undertaken since the 1970s against concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Among them are cases in which economic sanctions succeeded, such as South Korea and Taiwan, and eventually nuclear nonproliferation as a foreign policy objective was realized. However, in many cases, there is a historical reality that nuclear nonproliferation cannot be achieved only by such economic sanctions. From the examples of sanctions against North Korea and Iran, there have emerged not only issues of political coordination among the countries concerned, but also a various political considerations. These include engagement by “gatekeepers,” who have influence on the targeted countries, the shifting “breakout” status of nuclear development of targeted country, the establishment of policy objectives to be achieved by economic sanctions, and the cost to be accepted for imposing sanctions, including a possible transition to military sanctions. Under these circumstances, the value and importance of the multilayered non- proliferation framework consisting of the historic nuclear non-proliferation regime and export control on weapons of mass destruction must be re-evaluated.
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He, Jingjie

Abstract
Until now the Islamic Republic of Iran’s adoption of an independent active deterrence strategy, a strategy based on threat assessment and self-assessment, has overall been a success. The sole exception involved Iraq in 1980 and was due to Iran’s initial vulnerability following the revolution. As Saudi Arabia maneuvers with influence from US President Donald Trump, and given that Iran is unlikely to withdraw its military nuclear program under the existing security environment, the US and Israel ought to strengthen their nuclear deterrence capabilities against Iran. They need to issue clear, open, official retaliation commitments under a hypothetical nuclear scenario and bolster them with corresponding military and diplomatic capability.
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Qin, Tian

Abstract
The Arab Spring is supposed to be the Arab world’s great changes and turmoil, but Iran has repeatedly become the focus in the following changes. Whether it is in the Syrian civil war, or strikes against ISIS, or the Qatar crisis, Iran repeatedly appeared. There are different attitudes towards Iran’s behavior. The Trump administration holds the opinion that Iran is a regional peace breaker.US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on April 19,2017,”Where there is trouble, there is Iran in the Middle East,” and “the United States must prevent Iran from building pro-Iran forces with Hizbullah mode.”
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Izadi, Foad, and Esfandiar Shodaee

Abstract
Before the nuclear agreement with Iran, the Obama administration actively engaged with world powers and trade partners of Iran to strengthen the effectiveness of economic sanctions against Tehran. The role of China as the largest trade partner of Iran and as a veto power in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) was controversial in this regard. Washington persuaded most of Iran’s trade partners to join in the sanctions and reduce trade with Tehran. But during the same period, China continued and even expanded economic relations with Iran. Reviewing the events through a process-tracing method, this study reveals that the Obama administration implemented a “guarded engagement” strategy to persuade China to join in the sanctions and reduce trade with Tehran. On one hand, the United States accommodated China’s interests and concerns, and engaged and bargained with China; on the other hand, Washington pressured Beijing through different channels such as security threats and economic sanctions. In response, through a soft-balancing strategy, China did not directly oppose the United States, in order to safeguard relations with Washington; and it eventually voted in favor of the UN resolutions after negotiating over the texts. In the meantime, Beijing refrained from voluntary cooperation with Western sanctions and even increased trade with Iran and filled the void to make sanctions abortive and costly, and to prevent U.S. domination over the Middle East. This study concludes that China’s current standing is such that U.S. diplomatic levers, such as bargaining, threats, sanctions, and pressures, are too costly and barely productive in getting Beijing to follow American policies.
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Eberling, George G

Eberling, GeorgeSummary
This book examines China’s bilateral relations with its established suppliers of crude petroleum and on occasion, petroleum gas products including liquefied natural gas (LNG) based on a five- dimensional framework: political-diplomatic relations, economic-trade relations, military- security relations, cultural relations, and petroleum-energy relations. A five-dimensional approach is comprehensive in nature and offers a complete understanding of China’s complex relationships rather than looking solely on more typical perspectives like bilateral trade, security relationships, or energy ties. More often than not, social science literature focuses on one or more aspects of China’s bilateral relations, which does not provide a complete picture of the complex nature of its interstate ties. This book endeavors to bridge this gap and look more substantially at China’s bilateral relationships with energy-petroleum relations being the key aspect linking each one of them. The specific bilateral relationships examined are China’s relations with Angola, Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. These countries matter because their crude petroleum and petroleum gas product exports account for over 50 percent of China’s annual oil consumption.

Hannay, David, and Thomas R. Pickering

Introduction
The new constraints on, and monitoring of, Iran’s nuclear programme could be held as the gold standard for a strengthened non-proliferation regime.
The new American administration arrives at a time of serious threats to the nuclear non-proliferation regime, particularly in East Asia and in the Middle East. The nuclear deal struck with Iran by the previous administration and its partners provides a way forward. The established pattern of constraints on, and monitoring of, Iran’s nuclear programme could be held as the gold standard for the rest of the international community, becoming the basis for a promising new venture. This option is readily available to the United States and the partners with which it negotiated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA): China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom (known, with the US, as the P5+1), and the European Union.
For too long, attempts to move ahead in successive five-yearly reviews of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva have led nowhere, becoming preoccupied with relative minutiae. It is time now to get the non-proliferation show on the road again.
Two years ago, the agreement between the P5+1 and Iran averted a crisis which could have brought the whole non-proliferation regime into jeopardy and the Middle East region into conflict. The international community should draw on that agreement and turn its standards into general, global ones, applying them to all countries seeking to enrich uranium or attempting to use plutonium for any purpose.
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Fitzpatrick, Mark

Introduction
It is far better to implement an incomplete but effective nuclear agreement than to scrap it, hoping to achieve the best outcome while ending up with the worst.
Iran’s behaviour is problematic in many ways, including missile tests, abetting regional strife and taking US citizens hostage. Challenges in the nuclear field that used to top the list, however, are no longer an issue – at least not so long as the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in July 2015, remain fulfilled. And so far, they are. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s stockpile of lowenriched uranium is far below the amount allowed under the deal’s terms. With Iran’s nuclear programme remaining under strict limits, the prospect of going to war over this is also off the table for the time being.
Considering the other problems that Iran continues to pose, concerned states should prioritise their objectives. Preserving a deal that blocks all Iranian paths to a nuclear weapon is a first-order goal. Only with nuclear weapons would Iran present a direct national-security threat to states beyond its neighbourhood. Impairing Iran’s missile programme is a second-order objective. Stopping Iran’s arms shipments to Yemen is at best a third-order problem, the solution for which lies in an internal political settlement.
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Mistry, Dinshaw

Summary
In the early and mid-2000s, US policymakers anticipated India becoming one of America’s top global partners. Have New Delhi’s policies on key strategic issues actually aligned strongly with US objectives, as would be typical of close partners? An analysis of twelve prominent issues in US-India relations indicates that New Delhi’s policies mostly converged moderately, rather than to a high extent, with US objectives. Specifically, the alignment between New Delhi’s policies and US objectives was high or moderate-to-high on three issues–UN peacekeeping, nonproliferation export controls, and arms sales. It was moderate or low-to-moderate on six issues–China, Iran, Afghanistan, Indian Ocean security, Pakistan, and bilateral defense cooperation. And it was low or negligible on three issues–nuclear reactor contracts for US firms, nuclear arms control, and the war in Iraq. To be sure, despite the low or negligible convergence, New Delhi did not take an anti-US position on these issues.
Four factors explain why New Delhi’s policies aligned unevenly with US objectives across the issues: India’s strategic interests (that diverged from US interests on some issues); domestic political and economic barriers (that prevented greater convergence between India’s policies and US objectives); incentives and disincentives (that induced New Delhi to better align with US objectives); and certain case-specific factors.
This analysis suggests that, rather than expecting India to become a close ally, US policymakers should consider it a friendly strategic partner whose policies would align, on the average, moderately with US strategic interests.
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Rezaei, Farhad

Abstract
This article explores the paradox in the reaction of the United States to the two different proliferation cases: Pakistan’s proliferation and Iran’s weaponization effort. The article tries to find answer to the following key question; why the United States, as one of the guardians of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) which would prefer to see a region that is entirely free of weapons of mass destruction, ultimately has accepted Pakistan’s proliferation, while imposed considerable amount of pressure to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The paper posits that number of factors explain such differences; first, and at the theoretical level, Pakistan was never considered an “irrational” and “messianic” state like Iran, but regarded as a country with a certain degree of cold-war type nuclear rationality. Second and at the applied level, while Pakistan was a US ally with not having a history of challenging the United States, Iran has been considered enemy and a threat toward the US interest.
Third, while Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was viewed as a defensive mean against overwhelming strength of India, Iran’s possible nuclear arsenal considered to be for offensive uses against the United States and Israel. The fourth factor pertains to the consequences of proliferation, which is what happens when Iran’s neighboring countries may feel threatened by Iranian nuclear weapon and proceed to develop their own arsenal. Fifth factor deals with the possible Iran’s temptation to give some nuclear material to a terror group in which made the United States serious in preventing Iran’s weaponization. Last but not least, Israel was not involved to pressure and agitate against Pakistan, while it was applied a tremendous pressure against Iran to prevent it from achieving nuclear weapons.
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Mehta, Rupal N., and Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark

Abstract
Iran is one of 31 countries to have historically possessed nuclear latency, or the technology to build nuclear weapons. Yet both the academic and policy communities have understudied this critical facet of proliferation: what drives states like Iran to acquire latency? What are the consequences for regional and global security? What should strategically be done?
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Monshipouri, Mahmood, and Mehdi Zakerian

Introduction
Iran’s 2016 elections, both for parliament and the Assembly of Experts, offer hopeful lessons for the future direction of the country’s foreign policy. They hold significant implications for the re-election of President Hassan Rouhani in 2017 and will likely further the possibility of Iranian markets opening up to Western investments. The urgency surrounding Iran’s economic difficulties, however, is increasingly apparent – particularly considering how important economic crises have historically been in driving the country’s politics.
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Monshipouri, Mahmood, and Manochehr Dorraj

Introduction
Last year’s inking of the resolution ending the nuclear standoff between the P5+1 and Iran provides hope for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It also offers a unique opportunity to gauge the consequences of multilateral diplomacy by testing Iran’s willingness to fulfill its international obligations, as well as the great powers’ ability to respond positively by adopting a new constructive working relationship with Tehran.
The challenges facing the sustainability of the deal notwithstanding, the Iranian nuclear program signals the first significant opportunity for the nation to directly negotiate with the West – particularly with the United States. Yet, a number of key questions remain: why and how has the nuclear deal fallen short of a grand bargain? And what will it take to thaw the U.S.-Iran relationship, which has been long strained by deeply rooted mistrust, hostility, and conflicting policies?
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