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Iran, over the past four decades, lived through a state of continuous alert to defend itself against the threats surrounding it and targeting its national security. Over that period, Iran did not enjoy clear recognition of its legitimacy from the major powers, the United States in particular. This created ongoing anxiety and restricted Iran’s efforts of “preserving the regime”, which Ayatollah Khomeini made the highest duty. These circumstances had tangible effects on Iranian national security and its strategy. The article sees that the nuclear agreement might be the beginning of a new phase. Via the agreement, Iran feels it has gained the recognition of the international community, and acknowledgement of its demand for legitimacy. Most importantly for Iran, the agreement shifts it away from the obsession with security and stability, and encourages it to bring out the features of the “Iranian model” in the region. The paper also discusses the fears of neighboring states and Iran’s efforts to reassure them. The positions of the political currents and the power centers in Iran are also considered as well as their differences over the pluses and minuses of the agreement.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is taken here as a nucleus for new policies and powerful alliances that seek to establish a new world order; an order where the organization acts as a main pillar of the international power balance. The SCO has transformed from a regional organization with a specific goal into an international one by shaping new positions distinct from those of the United States. This was demonstrated through the SCO’s position on Iran’s nuclear program, the Korean issue, the Syrian crisis, and security issues in central Asia. Since this new international organization includes two permanent members of the Security Council (Russia and China), as well as nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan, as observers, a serious look at its program seems essential for projecting the outcome of recent shifts in world politics. This paper thus attempts to answer two central questions: How far can the SCO consolidate multipolarity in international relations away from US hegemony? How will this affect the international power balance?

Since the time of President Thomas Jefferson, and on through the presidents of the 20th century, the United States has talked about itself as the propagator, protector, and defender of democracy around the world. Yet America has never showed any qualms of forming military and political alliances with authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The US justifies these international alliances on the basis that “not all dictatorships in the world are enemies of the United States, but all the United States’ enemies are dictatorships.” The US therefore adopted a two-track diplomacy: while working to spread democracy (directly or by means of international organizations and NGOs) the US has no issue in supporting autocratic governments when its interests are involved. How did US policy apply to the democratic transformation in the former Eastern bloc states in Europe on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and subsequently, when American values and interests went hand in hand, and how did it then apply to the Arab Spring of 2011, when US values and interests were congruent in some cases and out of sync in others, according to the situation in each country and its strategic importance from America’s perspective? What are the results of these policies and what differences emerge from such a comparison of the Arab and East Europe cases.

The Syrian regime opted to hold presidential elections on June 3, 2014. It did this in spite of the dire social catastrophe and sharp political crisis which the country has faced since March of 2011. The race was contended by three candidates, including incumbent president Bashar Al Assad.

The current political scene has warned that Yemen could face huge threats in the coming years. The worst of these is the collapse of the country itself, in facing a comprehensive civil war. However, there is optimism that the outcomes of the national dialogue conference—which gained acceptance from core parties—will be entirely implementable. With optimism that the political scene is on a stable track, the economic situation is the next concern, with a distinct possibility that the country’s economic situation will get worse, with a spillover effect on the political situation. This paper presents Yemeni political history and describes the nation’s acting forces. The study shows the challenges of development that Yemen faces and the impacts of the 2011 uprising on this development, as well as the factors that led to the uprising. It then outlines the challenges to be faced by Yemen in the coming stages, and gives suggestions that might help in overcoming the difficulties facing stability and chances of comprehensive development.

In December of 2013, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reshuffled his cabinet, dismissing four ministers linked to a nationwide corruption scandal. Some of the ministers ousted from their positions were involved in the Halkbank scandal, a financial institution involved in the processing of payments for Iranian natural gas supplied to Turkey, and which the US has long accused of violating the terms of international sanctions on Tehran. Erdogan has accused exiled Turkish cleric Fathallah Gulen, a former ally of the AKP leader, of orchestrating these scandals within a wider “international conspiracy” aimed at bringing the AKP government down in retaliation for its regional and international policies. This paper shall examine how the present conflict between Erdogan and his erstwhile ally Gulen will influence Turkish politics, noting that Gulen’s acolytes pose a much greater risk to the AKP than all of the secular Turkish opposition parties combined. ​

The 2011 Arab uprisings sparked hopes for positive change in the regional politics of the Middle East. The uprisings not only challenged the authority of states at the domestic level but seemed poised to disrupt regional geopolitics and alter the position of the Middle East in the international system. With the outbreak of civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Sudan, military interventions in Bahrain and Yemen, and the unprecedented proliferation of armed non- state actors in the region, the uprisings seem to drive important changes in the nature of the state and its regional and international role. Despite its artificial inception and its puzzling survival throughout the 20 th century, the Arab State faces challenges in the post- 2011 era and its vulnerabilities have been exposed. While the uprisings may have weakened Arab states, changes at regional and international levels created permissive conditions to challenge the regional state system. Hamas's 7 October 2023 operation and Israel's ensuing wars in the region have further exacerbated state erosion and reinvigorated post- 2011 regional dynamics. This paper examines how structural international and regional conditions have reshaped statehood and agency in the region post- 2011. It also explores how the responses of Arab states to international conditions and the regional reverberations of the uprisings have further generated disintegrative effects for the Arab state.

The changing structure of International Law has always been a contentious issue because of the analytical and practical contradictions imposed by the concept of Solidarity whether its international or humanitarian sense.

This seminal article is one of the founding texts of Critical Theory in International Relations. In this article, Robert Cox advances a critical alternative to traditional International Relations theory by foregrounding the dialectical relationship between social forces, forms of state, and structures of world order, rather than limiting analysis to interactions among states as isolated units. Cox further distinguishes between problem-solving theory, which takes the existing order as a given and seeks to preserve and improve its functioning, and critical theory, which questions the historical conditions that produced that order, exposes its underlying power relations, and illuminates the possibilities for its transformation. He develops the concept of historical structures as continually evolving configurations composed of material capabilities, ideas, and institutions, and reconceptualizes hegemony as a congruence between power, ideology, and institutions, rather than as the mere material preponderance of a single state.

How is International Relations (IR) taught in the Arab World? What happens to what was once labelled an 'American Social Science' when it enters classrooms in the Arab world and is taught in Arabic? Despite the predominance of Western approaches and theories on the teaching of IR in the Arab World, there is tension between the need to train students in the classical theories as a prerequisite for knowledge production, and the need to adapt them to various political, social, and economic contexts across the globe. This study examines the different approaches to how IR is taught in Arab universities, and how Western theories are considered critically by the teaching of alternative approaches. The paper argues that the different approaches to teaching IR are more versatile theoretically than the range of published papers in leading academic journals in the West. As such, they may prove to be the starting point for new forms of knowledge production that better reflect the realities of international relations in the Arab world.