Iran's Impact on Regional Economics and Politics

This panel was compiled by the Conference Program Team from independently submitted paper proposals


Presentations

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The contemporary Middle East is torn between two major ideologies of Shiism and Sunnism, which occasionally undermine the norm of sovereignty of the modern international society. Behind this, stands two rivals—Iran and Saudi Arabia—that make use of proxy wars in countries such as Syria, Yemen and Iraq as a strategy in advancing their respective ideologies. My paper argues that at the regional level, a culture of rivalry similar to that of the Cold War has been taking place between Iran and Saudi Arabia since the fall of Saddam in 2003. This culture is thicker and overrides the global international institution of sovereignty accounting for inconsistencies in the foreign policies of Iran as well as proxy wars with Saudi Arabia. I adhere to the English School’s theoretical framework to illustrate the tension between the regional institution of rivalry and the global international institution of sovereignty. At the regional and global interstate levels, Iran conforms to the institutions of international society, which are heavily influenced by the rationalist tradition, while at the regional interstate, transnational and inter-human levels, traces of realism combined with revolutionism are more prevalent. By utilizing discourse analysis as a method, I examine the speeches of Iranian statesmen to comprehend the inconsistencies in Iran’s foreign policies. In addition, I scrutinize news articles and related documents to determine the interplay of realism, rationalism and revolutionism in the rhetoric and practice of Iranian foreign policy.

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The present research tries to find an answer for the role of the oil industry in social changes in oilfield in southern Iran. Based on the descriptive-analytical method and the documents available in Iran and Britain archives, the findings of this research show that supplying the man power in Iran and Britain Oil Company led to immigration to this region. The inside and outside immigrations which provided differences in religion, race tribe, nationality and language of this region replaced in few years the local culture of Lor and Arab tribes by a mixed culture. Meanwhile, this was led to the growth of the housing and city-making, increasing the political knowledge of the workers and businessmen, resistance against overindulgences and colonization of the oil company, acquaintance with health care in west style and replacing the traditional medicine by west medicine, welcoming to new training methods, striving to learning the professional work, city-dweller flourishing in west style, changing the consumption patterns, the growth of oil industry in oilfield and many other changes.