Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads

Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads PDF Author: David E. Thaler
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833049305
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
The U.S. ability to "read" the Iranian regime and formulate appropriate policies has been weakened by lack of access to the country and by the opacity of decisionmaking in Tehran. To improve understanding of Iran's political system, the authors describe Iranian strategic culture; investigate Iran's informal networks, formal government institutions, and personalities; assess the impact of elite behavior on Iranian policy; and summarize key trends.

Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads

Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads PDF Author: David E. Thaler
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833049305
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book Here

Book Description
The U.S. ability to "read" the Iranian regime and formulate appropriate policies has been weakened by lack of access to the country and by the opacity of decisionmaking in Tehran. To improve understanding of Iran's political system, the authors describe Iranian strategic culture; investigate Iran's informal networks, formal government institutions, and personalities; assess the impact of elite behavior on Iranian policy; and summarize key trends.

Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics

Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Islamic Republic of Iran is now perceived by many as a rising power in the Middle East and a long-term challenge to U.S. regional interests. The fall of Iran's archenemy, Saddam Hussein, has enabled it to expand its influence in Iraq and beyond. Its nuclear program continues relatively unabated, with the Islamic Republic defying international condemnation and sanction to pursue an ostensibly civilian nuclear program -- a program that could, technically, provide Tehran with a "breakout" capacity for nuclear arms, if it is not already a cover for a dedicated military effort. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fueled the fire through his inflammatory rhetoric about the United States, its allies in the Persian Gulf region, and his systematic denial of the Holocaust. The presidential election in June 2009 presents yet another cause for U.S. and Western concern. Yet the U.S. ability to gauge the extent and totality of the challenges posed by Iran is handicapped by the lack of official relations between the two states since 1980. Moreover, observers of the Iranian regime, both within Iran and abroad, often lament the opacity of Iranian decision making processes, which presents serious impediments to those observers trying to understand the Iranian system and the policies it produces. U.S. policy makers need both a more complete picture of the driving characteristics of the Iranian regime and a framework to formulate effective policies for securing U.S. interests vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic. The objective of this book is to offer a framework to help U.S. policy makers and analysts better understand existing and evolving leadership dynamics driving Iranian decision making. The research herein provides not only a basic primer on the structure, institutions, and personalities of the Iranian government and other influential power centers, but also a better understanding of the strategic culture underlying Iranian policy formulation and execution.

Iran After the Bomb

Iran After the Bomb PDF Author: Alireza Nader
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833080687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
This study explores how a nuclear-armed Iran would behave and what this would entail for the United States and its main regional allies. It analyzes the Islamic Republic's ideology, motivations, and national security doctrine; examines a nuclear-armed Iran's potential policies toward Saudi Arabia and the GCC; discusses its potential behavior toward Israel; explores its relations with terrorist groups; and presents key findings.

Living on the Edge

Living on the Edge PDF Author: Wyn Bowen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137273097
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In this book, the authors explore the controversial Iranian nuclear programme through the conceptual lens of nuclear hedging. In 2002, revelations regarding undeclared nuclear facilities thrust Iran’s nuclear activities under the spotlight and prompted concerns that Tehran was pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran has always denied nuclear weapons aspirations, yet it cannot be disputed that the Islamic Republic has gone well beyond what is required for a civil nuclear programme based on energy production and scientific research. What, then, is the nature and significance of Iran's nuclear behaviour? Does it form part of a coherent strategy? What can Iran's actions in the nuclear field tell us about Tehran's intentions? And what does the Iranian case teach us about proliferation behaviour more generally? This book addresses these questions by exploring the nature of nuclear hedging and how this approach might be identified, before applying this logic to the Iranian case. It provides fresh insights into the inherently opaque area of nuclear proliferation and a more nuanced interpretation of the Iranian nuclear challenge.

Everyday Iran

Everyday Iran PDF Author: Clarissa de Waal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857736639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Iran is a country which, despite its extensive coverage in the media, is often regarded as 'mysterious', 'exotic' and 'other-worldly'. This attitude often stems from a focus on the rhetoric of controversial figures in Iranian politics, rather than looking at the everyday lives of Iranians themselves. In this book, Clarissa de Waal uses her training as an anthropologist to examine the experiences of individuals, concentrating on the Fars province in southwest Iran. This serves to highlight contemporary Iran outside of the capital, which so often dominates western understanding of the country. De Waal interviews a wide range of subjects, from public sector workers and entrepreneurs to Qashqa'i (both settled and nomadic), from students to the unemployed and from hairdressers to university professors. Through these interviews, she offers insight into the commonplace rituals of family interaction, the economics of food and fuel subsidies (and their withdrawal), the pervasiveness of unemployment and the varying approaches to Islam. She explores the extent to which the government of Iran and state-sanctioned religion impinges on citizens at home, work and in their social lives. Yet despite intrusive state interventionism, de Waal encounters inconsistencies between official government strictures and daily life. Satellite dishes, though illegal, are owned by most households, enabling them to watch foreign television from Mexican telenovellas to CNN. Uniquely, by being there during the 2009 elections, de Waal is also able to examine first-hand the various reactions both to the debate in the run-up to the elections and the huge protests in the wake of the election, recording the diverse responses to the candidates and their political platforms. By focusing on the everyday existence of a variety of Iranians from different backgrounds, de Waal offers insightful analysis concerning ordinary Iranians' lives and the impact the state has on them economically, socially and religiously.

Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey

Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey PDF Author: Karabekir Akkoyunlu
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1399506137
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
A comparative analysis of the political consolidation and popular contestation of regime guardianship in Turkey and the Islamic Republic of Iran Moves beyond the Secular vs. Islamic, Sunni vs. Shia dichotomies to highlight Turkey and Iran's understudied hybrid institutional architecture Compares and contrasts the foundations, consolidation, internal frictions and popular contestation of regime guardianship in two ideologically inimical republics Provides insights for the democratisation and hybrid regime scholarship into how tutelary institutions shape and constrain electoral institutions and processes Analyses the key actors, dynamics and turning points of the power struggles that shaped and transformed Iran and Turkey in the 21st century Critically assesses the causes and consequences of the fragility of democratic governance and the persistence of patriarchal power structures in both countries This book offers the first comparative study of the foundations, consolidation and contestation of regime guardianship in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey. For decades, the military in Turkey and the clergy in Iran acted as the guardians of Atatürk and Khomeini’s ideological legacies. At the turn of the 21st century rising popular actors in both countries started challenging the tutelary control of the state and society. While in Turkey the clash between the Kemalist guardians and their Islamist-led rivals resulted in a victory for the latter, although not for democracy, in Iran, traditionalist guardians were able to thwart popular challenges to their authority at the expense of the regime’s democratic legitimacy. How was guardianship established, consolidated and contested in these republics with seemingly inimical founding ideologies? Why did it unravel in Turkey but survive in the Islamic Republic in the early 2010s? And what do these power struggles and their outcomes tell us about political contestation in tutelary hybrid regimes?

Containing Iran

Containing Iran PDF Author: Robert J. Reardon
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 083307637X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Iran's nuclear program is one of this century's principal foreign policy challenges. Despite U.S., Israeli, and allied efforts, Iran has an extensive enrichment program and likely has the technical capacity to produce at least one nuclear bomb if it so chose. This study assesses U.S. policy options, identifies a way forward, and considers how the United States might best mitigate the negative international effects of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation

Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation PDF Author: Wilfred Wan
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820353299
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The contemporary nuclear landscape is rife with challenges. Stagnated progress in disarmament, widespread modernization plans, and emergent proliferation pathways are contributing to the risk of catastrophe. Meanwhile, global nuclear order appears more precarious than ever. This book makes a case for a regional reorientation of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, arguing that a more specialized, decentralized, and localized arrangement could more effectively address post-Cold War challenges. In the process, it develops a framework to analyze the conditions that would allow for more robust regional nuclear cooperation.?? Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation includes a series of case studies, centering on Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. It provides a comprehensive overview of existing nuclear cooperation at the regional level, including in the context of nuclear-weapon-free zones. For each case, the book both analyzes the viability of a stronger regional nuclear order and considers the form such an order would likely take. What is the magnitude and character of the nuclear proliferation threat across different regions? What does the presence of institutions in economic, environmental, and human security domains suggest about the likelihood of addressing that threat? A better understanding of broader regional patterns may be the key to explaining the possibility of regional nuclear cooperation. It may also help identify means to effectuate the timing and scale of that cooperation, bolstering regional nuclear orders and, in turn, ensuring the viability of global nuclear order.

Women and the Islamic Republic

Women and the Islamic Republic PDF Author: Shirin Saeidi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009027948
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Based on extensive interviews and oral histories as well as archival sources, this book challenges the dominant masculine theorizations of state-making in post-revolutionary Iran. Offering a comprehensive study on citizenship formation, it reveals the centrality of non-elite women's participation in the process of citizenship formation.

Exploring Regional Responses to a Nuclear Iran

Exploring Regional Responses to a Nuclear Iran PDF Author: C. Hobbs
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137369817
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
This book challenges the widely held assumption that a nuclear-armed Iran would provoke a proliferation cascade in the Middle East. Arguing that a domino effect is by no means inevitable, the authors set out a number of policy measures that could be enacted by the international community to reduce this risk.