درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Iranian exceptionalism has been a major factor in preventing rapprochement between the US and Iran. There are two major factions within the foreign policy establishment of the Islamic Republic representing “reconciliation discourse” and “resistance discourse”. These two can be seen as sub-discourses within the Islamic Revolution discourse engaged in a struggle over its “correct” interpretation. The reconciliation discourse emphasizes on “prudence”, while the resistance discourse emphasizes upon “conscientiousness”, both signifiers within the Islamic Revolution discourse. Both movements agree that these signifiers exist within the discourse, but they disagree about the primacy and centrality of one over the other. The “reconciliation discourse” seeks development as the main goal of Iran’s foreign policy, and, hence, considers reconciliation with the US to be a precondition to that goal. Its arguments imply that Iran is not an exceptional country. The resistance discourse, on the other hand, is deeply exceptionalist and deems resistance against the US and maximalist independence to be the main objectives of Iran’s foreign policy. This discourse strongly opposes mending ties with the US because such a move would be understood as a threat to Iran’s exceptionalism. These sub-discourses also perceive the US differently; the reconciliation discourse considers US to be dynamic and heterogenous, while the resistance discourse considers US to be unchanging and monolithic, and this disagreement also contributes to their policy toward the US, and this understanding is also closely intertwined with exceptionalism. Overall, the dispute over Iranian exceptionalism has made relationship with the US the main issue of contention within Iranian foreign policy discourses.

The United States have adopted competitive and even conflictive trade policies to redefine and rewrite the global political economy in the post globalization era. The prime movers of removing trade barriers and expanding trade concession, have adopted a restrictive theory of trade after terrorist attacks of 9/11, with a gradual shift from an easy international trade environment to a selective preferential trade relations with like- minded countries. New measures and technologies were developed to track movement of different goods. Logistics and international shipping industries were negatively affected due to national restrictive policies. The international financial crisis and Covid-19 were additional factors to push developed countries to adopt protective trade policies to neutralize the negative impact of the crisis in the absence of financial resources. Former trade partners were considered competitors and those with different trade theories or interests became adversaries. US trade disputes and conflicts surged in XXI century and international dispute settlement mechanisms were challenged by US foreign policy to obtain concessions. This article is meant to respond to the question that “What is the US practice in international trade in the post-globalization era and what would be the implications for the developing countries and global business environment”? The hypothesis is that “US trade policy and practice in the twenty first century has been affected by global geopolitics and geo- economics, where emerging poles of power are meticulously considered and long-term strategies are adopted. In this context; trade disputes, wars and sanction diplomacy might happen either for trade inequality concerns, optimal tariff theory, or politically painted economic objectives”. A qualitative analytical methodology is used to study roots and causes of re-globalization wars and to analyze consequences of antagonistic approaches for the multilateral trading system. A new liberal theoretical framework is used to analyze post- globalizations US trade practices.

As one of the main goals of Iranian Islamic Revolution, achieving a modern Islamic civilization derived from Islamic rationality is faced with some challenges. As the most fundamental for an intellectual system, such intellectual challenged can be named “rationality”. On this basis, using attributional analysis type of the qualitative research method, this paper is to answer the following question: “Based on the Islamic revolution leaders’ viewpoints and at the regional level, which most fundamental intellectual challenge does the Islamic revolution face on its way for achieving its depicted high level goals, i.e., bringing up a modern Islamic civilization, and how could they be overcome? The findings indicate that “Takfiri rationality” is the most fundamental challenge at the regional level. Challenge gaps between Takfiri rationality and Shia rationality at the region can be worded as “adhering to texts versus narrations”, “opposing the reason“, “monotheism and accusing Islamic sects”, “believing in and relying on the Prophet companions’ fairness” as well as “opposing emulation”. Criticizing such a rationality, Shia rationality emphasized on “monotheism in Shia school of thought and being free of superstition”, “emphasizing on the necessity of empowering the Islamic revolution and the Islamic axis of resistance”, “the necessity of annihilating ISIS as the main promoter of Islamophobia all over the world”, “opposing any kind of violence and act of terrorism” as well as “denying whatsoever kind of dividing Islamic sects”. Hereupon, operational solutions for dealing with the challenge of Takfirism are proposed in three categories, namely intellectual-scientific, cultural, political and military-security.