جزیره علم

Iran`s Identical Challenges in the Region 

Mahdi Movahed-Abtahi

Iran could not conserve itself independent to its neighbours -such as the GCC, Turkey, and others- to complain sanction limitation.

While nuclear programs was developing, Iranian regime could did not predict its consequences. More economically dependence with many regional countries such as UAE and Turkey led it to more challenges that now are prominent. They economically developed relations although different ethnicity: Sunni vs. Shii and Persian vs. Turkish. GCC and Turkey benefit from Iran`s sanction but their perceptions of Iran’s nuclear agreement is identically different: The GCC state need social and ideological legitimating to survive while Turkey try to vitalize Ottoman empire as the Great Turkish.

What should be scarified: political/economical relations or identities? Each country goes to serve its identity more and more. Before 2016, Iranian society became more compressed, the public interest becoming decompressed more and more although the regime concludes the changes as resistance, a word that should be interpreted in a military discipline! From 2016, Iran is moulting its skin -only the political and economical identities- and is not renewing its identity. After Iraq-Iran war, the social identity has been slowly refreshing. The regime tray to save more legitimating as much as Iranian society is changing although the regime moves slower. Before discussing on the changing nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its survival in its current form, we should redefine I.R. of Iran: Is it a relationship between Islam and polity?

I do not think that these changes are occurring in the Iran`s region. The GCC states seem to be as some similarities among many differences. They being faced more challenges on rising foreign workers, dwarfing the local workers, citizenship as the first, and the second or even the third degree citizens. The national citizenry is not forming in the construction of a sustainable social contract. Their traditional culture is disappearing at societal and governmental level. Social minorities in the GCC are powerful threats. As a conclusion, Iran and various Arabian actors cannot perceive each other and the region as a whole.

Iran is empowering its political relation  to the regional minorities and identically to shii populations. The prospects for Iranian engagement with the West is good, not as a objective (as Turkey wishes) but as a means of refreshing economical and political power, renewing ideological identity, and surviving as a model of promised government (as the Quran affirms).

Iran looks at Iraq not only as its backyard but also as a part of the great shii empire in the past (Safavid) and in the future (Imam Mahdi`s worldwide goverenment). Iran and Iraq have more identitcal similarity than Turkey, the GCC states and even Yemen. Iran’s and Turkey’s foreign policies towards Iraq are ideologically and ethnically different.