Abstract
In this chapter, President Hassan Rouhani’s conceptual approach to foreign policy will be studied. The purpose is to answer the question whether Rouhani ever succeeded to introduce and adopt a concrete foreign policy doctrine during his first term in office. We begin with a short comparison between Rouhani and previous presidents since 1989. Unlike the two presidents that preceded him, Rouhani does not believe or advocate any utopianist doctrine in his foreign policy. He seems to be a mere “pragmatist” politician who was elected to office with one, and only one, major mandate: to put an end to Iran’s decade-long nuclear dispute with the big powers. Rouhani’s foreign policy in his first term in office can be called a “project-based” foreign policy with the single aim of concluding Iran’s nuclear negotiations. It is then widely distinct from Ahmadinejad’s or Khatami’s “value-based” foreign policies with universalist agendas, albeit opposite ones. In following a pragmatic path, however, Rouhani falls short behind former President Rafsanjani, who used pragmatism as a quasi-revolutionary tool to push Iranian foreign policy forward as a whole. Despite having a strong conceptual basis, Rouhani’s motto of “constructive interaction with the world” hardly found any grounds for realization in Iran’s regional policy, and failed to bring about any major elevation in Iran–United States bilateral relations.
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- 1.
Daniel Șandru, “Ideology, Between the Concept and the Political Reality,” The Knowledge Based Society Project, no. 169 (Sfera Politicii), http://www.sferapoliticii.ro/sfera/169/art09-Sandru.php.
- 2.
For more profound discussions of the various definitions of ideology, see Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction 5th ed (Palgrave Macmillan: 2012); Richard Dragger and Terence Ball, Ideas and Ideologies: A Reader 10th ed (Routledge: 2016).
- 3.
For this purpose, several important primary sources will be used as references in this chapter, including but not limited to, Rouhani’s 2013 campaign plan, President Rouhani’s speeches at the UN General Assembly meetings in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016; as well as President Rouhani’s address to the 2016 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos and the March 2017 summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in Islamabad.
- 4.
“Hassan Rouhani wins Iran presidential election,” BBC News, June 15, 2013, www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22916174.
- 5.
“Iran’s currency hits all-time low as western sanctions take their toll,” The Guardian, October 1, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/01/iran-currency-rial-all-time-low; “The Collapse of Iran’s Rial,” The Gatestone Institute, February 21, 2013, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3597/iran-rial-collpase.
- 6.
“Sanctions push Iran’s oil exports to lowest in decades,” Reuters, June 5, 2013, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asia-iran-oil/sanctions-push-irans-oil-exports-to-lowest-in-decades-idUSBRE9540FV20130605; “Iranian Oil Minister Concedes Sanctions Have Hurt Exports,” New York Times, January 7, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/world/middleeast/irans-oil-exports-and-sales-down-40-percent-official-admits.html.
- 7.
“UN Security Council’s Resolutions on Iran,” Arms Control Association, August, 2017, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Security-Council-Resolutions-on-Iran.
- 8.
Hassan Rouhani, “Barnameh-ye Dolat-e Tadbir va Omid,” Tehran: Setad-e Entekhabati-ye Dr. Hassan Rouhani: Khordad, June, 2013.
- 9.
Ibid., pp. 55–57.
- 10.
Ibid., pp. 59–60.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 56.
- 12.
Hassan Rouhani, “Peace and Development; Recreation of the World Order” (Speeches of Dr. Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the UN General Assembly 2013–2016), Tehran: Office of the President, 1396/2017, p. 176.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 174.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 173.
- 15.
Ibid., p. 172.
- 16.
Hassan Rouhani, “Dr. Rouhani’s speech in a gathering convened by Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York” (speech, New York, September 27, 2013), Official Website of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, http://president.ir/en/71857.
- 17.
Amin Saikal, “Iran and the Changing Regional Strategic Environment,” in Iran in the World: President Rouhani’s Foreign Policy, ed. Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dara Conduit, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 27.
- 18.
Hassan Rouhani, “President’s speech addressing the 44th world Economic Forum” (speech, January 23, 2014), Official Website of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, http://president.ir/en/74125.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Hassan Rouhani, “Peace and Development; Recreation of the World Order” (Speeches of Dr. Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the UN General Assembly 2013–2016), Tehran: Office of the President, 1396/2017, p. 156.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 157.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 156.
- 24.
Ibid., pp. 130–131.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 130.
- 26.
Ibid., pp. 126–127.
- 27.
Hassan Rouhani, “President Rouhani addressing United Nations General Assembly” (speech, New York, September 22, 2016), Official Website of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, http://president.ir/en/95419.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Hassan Rouhani, “President Rouhani at ECO Summit: 21st century the century of Asia’s leadership” (speech, Islamabad, March 1, 2017), Official Website of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, http://president.ir/en/98040.
- 31.
Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dara Conduit, Iran in the World: President Rouhani’s Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 7.
- 32.
Amin Saikal, “Iran and the Changing Regional Strategic Environment,” in Iran in the World: President Rouhani’s Foreign Policy, ed. Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dara Conduit (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 28–29.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 34.
Przemyslaw Osiewicz, “The Iranian Foreign Policy in the Persian Gulf Regionalism under the rule of President Hassan Rouhani,” in Przegl1d Strategiczny, no. 7, 2014.
- 35.
“The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/.
- 36.
I have borrowed this term from Rouhollah K. Ramazani, “Independence without Freedom: Iran’s Foreign Policy,” University of Virginia Press, (2013), pp. 196–212.
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Ahouie, M. (2020). Exploring President Rouhani’s Foreign Policy Doctrine 2013–2017. In: Zaccara, L. (eds) Foreign Policy of Iran under President Hassan Rouhani's First Term (2013–2017). Contemporary Gulf Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3924-4_2
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