Iran has come to the forefront of media and policy discussion in recent years due to the renewal of nuclear prospects within the complex nation. The media and much of the west has taken notice of the situation and made predictions and assertions often leading toward nuclear war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the west often forgets our relationship with Iran when Muhammad Reza Shah, the last of the Shah's, was in power. From 1941 to 1979 the United States enjoyed peaceful relations with Iran; the two nations even reached a certain economic prosperity with each other. The Shah introduced reform that was pleasurable to the United States and in return, America traded and invested in Iran, including establishing a nuclear program in Iran and building a number of nuclear facilities. In 2005 when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, formally the mayor of Tehran, was elected the great eye of the United States turned once again to Iran, viewing it as a threat. This study explores the Shah's rule and Ahmadinejad's presidency; and perhaps more importantly, the American foreign policy that was established for both. A brief history of both Iranian leaders, their complexities; the external and internal factors that effected each individually and as a leader of the great nation will be followed by a comparison of both using the foreign policy of the United States as a medium for comparison. This thesis will perhaps expose an often ignored perspective on American Iranian foreign relations.

This thesis adopts a Wendtian constructivist perspective in order to explore how Iran defined its interests in the context of the nuclear issue during the Ahmadinejad presidency. Against realist-type approaches which often attributed a nuclear weapons rationale to Iran and framed its programme as a threat to international security, it argues that Iran’s nuclear policy must be interpreted within the context of its identity and the latter’s causal and constitutive effects on its interests and behaviours. The Wendtian perspective, together with a mixed methods approach combining document analysis and interviews, sheds light on how Iran understood its interests and why the regime perceived opportunities/threats and permissible/unacceptable options in the way it did. This thesis demonstrates that Iran’s nuclear programme was interpreted within a structure of meaning that emphasised its legality and legitimacy. Additionally, it shows that the Ahmadinejad administration’s resistance strategies cannot be understood outside the context of the perceived humiliating failure of the Khatami administration’s confidence-building approach. Not only had Iran’s reputation and independence been jeopardised, but its failure to secure recognition of its nuclear rights also confirmed that the issue was a Western-led manufactured crisis that aimed to undermine the IRI, prevent the development of the Iranian nation and transform the IAEA’s mandate. Iran thus engaged in strategies of self-assertion to challenge the perceived illegal and illegitimate policies of its negotiation partners, the UNSC and the IAEA. Furthermore, this thesis contends that the Ahmadinejad administration sought to transform the diplomatic focus on its nuclear programme into multifaceted geopolitical opportunities. On the one hand, Iran attempted to situate the issue within the wider context of global debates around access to peaceful nuclear energy and the sustainability of the non-proliferation regime. Its denunciations of the Western NWSs’ discriminatory practices echoed with other states’ concerns. On the other hand, Iran’s proposals to the EU-3/P5+1 included repeated offers of cooperation on a range of dilemmas of common interests and aversion. As such, Iran pursued dual-track strategies towards its main nuclear opponents, combining enforcement costs with inducements. Finally, the belief that the US lay at the core of the nuclear issue prompted important debates and developments within Iran about the question of their bilateral relations. While these challenged conventional wisdoms about the principlists’ preferences, Iran’s discursive and ever-increasing strategic dependence on the US continued to explain its Janus-faced strategies towards the superpower.

Ce mémoire propose l'analyse de l'approche du candidat présidentiel Barack Obama à l'égard du dossier nucléaire iranien. Plus particulièrement, nous cherchons à déterminer s'il y a cohérence entre les promesses électorales de Barack Obama concernant l'Iran et la politique étrangère des États-Unis à l'égard de l'Iran mise en oeuvre durant la première moitié de son mandat à la Maison-Blanche (2009-2011). Menace à la sécurité nationale étatsunienne, l'Iran représente un enjeu capital lors de la campagne présidentielle américaine de 2008 en raison de son programme nucléaire. Contrairement au candidat républicain John McCain, le candidat démocrate Barack Obama préconise le dialogue et le multilatéralisme. Malgré l'impossibilité pour les Américains de rétablir les relations diplomatiques avec les Iraniens, en rupture depuis la crise des otages de 1980, il tend la main à cet ennemi des États-Unis. Durant la campagne, Obama s'est engagé à prévenir l'acquisition de l'arme nucléaire par l'Iran, principalement en conduisant une diplomatie agressive sans toutefois écarter l'option militaire.Ce mémoire conclut qu'il y a bel et bien cohérence entre les promesses électorales et la politique étrangère du président Obama, car celui-ci a respecté la presque totalité de ses engagements électoraux concernant l'Iran. Dans les deux premières années de son mandat, il s'est par exemple adressé directement aux leaders iraniens dans l'espoir d'ouvrir un dialogue avec ceux-ci, il a révisé la posture nucléaire américaine et a conclut [i.e. conclu] un nouveau traité avec la Russie en matière de désarmement nucléaire, et il a été en mesure de mobiliser une coalition internationale afin d'imposer de nouvelles sanctions au régime iranien.

This study is a quantitative content analysis of the New York Times and Washington Post coverage of Iran during the period surrounding the Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension to power in 1979 as well as the period surrounding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in 2005. The results showed that coverage of Iran in the elite American print media as it related to terror was higher in the period after Khomeini came to power and also in the period after Ahmadinejad's election than it was in the period immediately preceding their respective ascensions. The results also showed that there was more coverage of Iran as it related to terror in the year surrounding Ahmadinejad's election than there was during the year surrounding Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power in Iran.

Since the early days of 1979, the Islamic Revolution of Iran has been seen as a phenomenon unique in history, one which must be viewed as somehow separate from other political Islamic movements in the 20th century. In chapter 1, this thesis problematizes this interpretation of the Revolution by analyzing it through the lens of an earlier ideological movement, pan-Islamism, and applying methods from the study of conceptual history to draw linkages between this movement and the Islamic Revolution, rooting it more deeply in the region’s political and intellectual history, and casting light on the poorly-understood pan-Islamic aspects of Iran’s Revolutionary ideology. In chapter 2, it applies methodological innovations from the digital humanities, more specifically corpus linguistics, in carrying out a series of five case studies to examine the transformation of Iranian ideology over time, by analyzing a set of five text corpora comprised of individual leaders’ writings and speeches. It further illustrates how theoretical advances in discourse analysis and history seem to be moving towards the same point, and how the application of corpus linguistic methods advances these bodies of theory. Chapters 3 through 7 comprise the case studies, which are, in order: Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei, the two Supreme Leaders; Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani, Mohammad Khatami, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the three Presidents since 1989. These chapters illustrate through analysis of the textual data how each political leader has adapted the received political discourse to the exigencies of their times, and how pan-Islamism itself has remained a consistent, albeit dynamic, linking thread running through the period 1979-2009. By studying pan-Islamism in the Iranian context, we can explain several features of Iranian political discourse which otherwise seem incomprehensible, and better situate the Islamic Republic within the political and discursive transformations taking place at the regional level of the Middle East, and the global level of the Muslim umma.

伊朗伊斯蘭共和國為中東地區主要國家之一。自1957年與美國合作發展核能以來，除了在柯梅尼政權初期曾短暫中斷外，歷任的領導人皆大力支持核科技的發展。從近年來的發現，顯示伊朗正在持續進行某些秘密的核計畫，使得國際憂心伊朗可能有發展核武的意圖。一旦伊朗擁有核武，將對國際安全產生重大衝擊。 本文分析的重點，在於伊朗發展核科技的背景、動機、經過，還有各國對伊朗核計畫的態度，以及伊朗核武化之後對國際安全的衝擊。 / The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the major powers in the Middle East. Since 1957, when nuclear energy program received technical assistance from the U.S., its successive leaders have eagerly pursued the policy for developing nuclear technology. The only exception took place during the early years of the Ayatollah Khomeni government when all nuclear program was temporarily suspended. Recent disclosures show that Iran has been conducting several covert nuclear programs, which is considered by the international community as a possible step toward nuclear weapons. This thesis first analyzes the background of Iran’s nuclear development, its motives, and the evolution of its nuclear development. The U.S., Russia, the PRC, and other related powers’ attitude toward Iran’s nuclear programs will be analyzed latter. Once Iran gets nuclear weapons, its impact on the security in the Middle East as well as on the nuclear non-proliferation regime will also be examined finally.

This study examines the decision making process in Washington which led to the current non-existence of political and economic relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States. The study examines the U.S.-Iran relationship at three levels-of-analysis: the individual, state, and system levels. From a geopolitical perspective, Iran and the United States have often been natural allies that pursued similar policy goals. After 9/11, the U.S. entered Afghanistan and Iraq which further necessitated the reengagement of Tehran. Iranian regional clout would play a vital role in stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan and without Iran's assistance; peace will not likely be realized in those states. Amongst the most compelling reasons for Washington to engage in meaningful dialogue with Tehran are: terrorism, the war on drugs, the Iranian sponsorship of militant groups, and Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear program. The study concludes that rapprochement should occur in two phases. The first being cooperation in areas of mutual concern such as the war on drugs. The second phase promoting confidence building methods, which would lead to a strategic partnership based on mutual interests.