Manochehr Dorraj

Behind Iran's Nuclear Pursuit?

The present nuclear standoff between Iran, the United States, Israel, and the European Union has lately been the center of much media attention, debate, and public discourse. While the Iranian regime contends that its pursuit of nuclear power is primarily intended to be an additional energy supply as the population exceeds 75 million, the primary factors that inform the regime’s ambitions are political and go beyond the use of nuclear power as a mere source of energy. According to most informed estimates, Iran is 5 to 10 years away from acquiring nuclear capability. With the uranium enrichment program now underway, Iran could produce nuclear weapons if they acquire the necessary technology and scientific knowledge. Increasingly, the Islamic Republic perceives its survival to be linked to possession of a credible deterrent. Whether Iran will be able to achieve its goal remains to be seen.

The Dragon Nests: China’s Energy Engagement of the Middle East

China is the largest consumer of energy, the leading exporter of manufactured goods and possesses the second largest economy in the world. The great dragon’s current economic activity extends to all corners of the world, including the hydrocarbon-rich Middle East. Since becoming a net importer of oil in 1993, China’s engagement of the Middle East has focused heavily on energy acquisition as the country urgently needs reliable sources of oil and natural gas to continue its unprecedented economic rise. For now, Middle Eastern countries seem amenable to the nesting dragon, whose increasing energy consumption, rapidly expanding economy, lack of colonial history and a policy of ‘offend no one’, its vast cash reserves and a willingness to pay premium prices for energy sources render it a highly appealing partner, capable of balancing the hegemonic policies and unipolar presence of the US. This article provides a summary of China’s expanding energy relations with seven major energy producing states of the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, UAE and Qatar, and assesses the political implications of China’s burgeoning relationship with the region.

Islam and Human Rights: Ideals and Practices

The debate over compatibility of Islam and human rights has raged among theologians, scholars, intellectuals, and the public at large for generations in the Muslim World as well as in the West. This discourse, however, has become more intense since the proclamation of 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). That declaration pronounced that all human beings are born free and are equal in dignity and rights.1 Article 2 of the UDHR stipulates: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” The rights entailed in the UDHR are indivisible and inalienable and include wide-ranging civil-political, as well as economic, social, and cultural rights. These universal rights include such rights as to life, liberty, and security of person; freedom from slavery and servitude; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; right to education; right to work; right to a nationality; and right to own property. According to the UDHR, all people are entitled to these rights by virtue of their humanity.

In the throes of civilizational conflict

As the ideological conflict of the former superpowers has ended in the post‐Cold‐War era, some policymakers—in search of new enemies abroad—have discovered a new menace. Having declared victory over the threat from the East—communism—some intellectuals now warn us about a more ominous menace from the South. If the conflict between capitalism and communism arose from competing ideologies and economic systems that both originated in Judeo‐Christian tradition, the new global conflict with the South derives from primeval and civilizational loyalties that do not easily lend themselves to a rational or peaceful resolution. If George Kennan was the Cold Wars chief theoretician, then Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington is the intellectual architect of civilizational war. The Third World poses not merely a political and economic threat but also a challenge to the Wests cherished and superior values. It threatens Western civilization, which Huntington claims is on the verge of being overrun, polluted, a...

Iranian Populism: Its Vicissitudes and Political Impact

Abstract Iran neither produces the technology nor possesses the financial or the political capabilities that drive globalization. Yet in an interdependent world, with a political posture that is defiant of the hegemonic powers that are to a large extent in the driver seat of the bus of globalization, it has managed to survive. The political resiliency of the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979 in face of formidable external threats, internal obstacles, and the challenges of a rapidly changing world in which it remains on the periphery, is a vexing question indeed. The regime has used the rhetoric and ideology of populism to remain defiant and shore up its “problematic” legitimacy.

Iran's Democratic Impasse

The 1979 Iranian revolution was a major watershed in international affairs. It decisively changed the balance of power in the Middle East and catalyzed the Islamic revival that has swept the Muslim world in the last two decades. Since the departure of the Iranian revolution’s leader, Ayatolah Khomeini, from the political scene in 1989, Iranian society has undergone a fundamental change. It’s a change of hearts and minds that has produced a viable civil society. For the most part, however, this transformation had gone unnoticed by the outside world until recently. Only the stunning landslide victory of reform-minded Mohammed Khatami as president in 1997 revealed the depth of the upheaval.

The Future of Sino-Iran Relations

Iran and China’s expanding economic and political relations have a significant regional and global impact that as of yet has not received much scholarly scrutiny. This chapter examines the historical roots, evolution, and development of the Sino-Iranian relationship with a special emphasis on post 1979 period. Many bilateral economic and political issues bind the two nations, such as trade in arms, energy, manufactured goods, and technology. But this relationship also has a political and strategic dimension that serves both nations well. Based on the analysis of the present dynamics, I speculate on possible future trends.

Liberalization and Retrenchment in the Middle East and North Africa

The two predominant forces of social change in the Third World in the late twentieth century are religious revivalism and democratization. The emergence of this new apparently contradictory phenomenon is itself a byproduct of globalization and the two divergent forces of economic integration and cultural particularism that it puts in motion. The magnitude and vibrance of these two phenomena in the Middle East and North Africa have been quite divergent. While Islamic revivalism has been the predominant social force in the region in the last two decades, the forces of democratization and their achievements have been relatively meagre and negligible. Another peculiarity of democratization in the region is its convergence with Islamic. Due to global and regional religious revival, and the political weaknesses of secular forces, Islamists have been in the best position in many parts of the Muslim World to take advantage of political openings and mobilize themselves for contestation of political power. This reality has put the issue of compatibility of Islam and democracy to the forefront of political debate among Muslim theologians, intellectuals and western academicians. Reconciling a sacred faith with democracy, whose historical roots are attributed to western cultural and institutional traditions, has posed a host of challenges for theoreticians as well as political practitioners.