A Comparative Analysis of Iranian Foreign Policy: The Sagas of Oil Nationalisation and the Nuclear Program

Foreign Policy Analysis has traditionally been dominated by empirical foreign policy studies of Western states. This paper redresses this imbalance through a comparative analysis of Iran’s foreign policy and seeks to establish to what extent the two domestic factors of the internal struggle for power and state-society relations similarly affected two temporally different Iranian foreign policy episodes: the oil nationalization foreign policy (1947-1953) and the nuclear foreign policy (2003-2013). In both cases, Iran adopted a defiant foreign policy strategy, marked by a reluctance to give up its “legitimate rights.” Considering this similarity, the question that has remained open is to what extent, in a comparative perspective, these domestic political factors equally affected in strength and intensity Iran’s adoption of a defiant foreign policy strategy. This paper’s aim is to answer this question, which will, in turn, contribute to a better understanding of Iran’s foreign policy in a comparative perspective.