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The Middle East, as one of the most dynamic and troubling world regions, has a wide range of problems. However, in my view, the essential, if not the most essential, security issue here, is terrorism. It seems that the relative decline of terrorist groups, such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda, has made us forget that there are indeed underlying problems that cause the emergence of these deadly organizations. This paper aims to identify these causes by analyzing Saudi and Iranian foreign policy towards U.S.-designated terrorist organizations: Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and Islamic State. In the process, the thesis will establish the general motives of these two states to support and fight terrorism, as well as their means of doing it. Furthermore, it will dive into the specifics of the policies that these two formulate towards every one of the previously stated groups. That will be done in order to prove arguments contending how Riyadh, in many ways, hinders U.S. counterterrorism efforts, while Iranians, contrary to popular belief, contribute to it. Acknowledging that there are many things on which these two states need to improve, the thesis will offer recommendations pointing to the need for Washington to take a more balanced approach to these two countries if it wishes to create a region where its...

Bachelor's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

In the years following World War II, Iran became one of the closest allies of United States of America in the Middle East. The era of friendship was replaced by hostilities and mutual mistrust after the 1979 Iranian revolution. In order to understand the current situation the analysis of American foreign policy towards Iran during the reign of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi has been done. The author of the thesis The Making of a Special Relationship: Iran in the Foreign Policy of the United States, 1953 - 1979 questions what kind of policy the United States adopted towards Iran that inevitably led to such dramatic end? What kind of rule Washington pursued towards Tehran that Revolution arose with anti-American spirit? The research has been performed in a constructivist framework. American foreign policy with its specific values, norms, beliefs, culture and language towards other states creates, according to constructivist scholars, three different types of rule: hegemony, hierarchy and heteronomy. The analysis of U.S. foreign policy and declassified primary documents showed that U.S.-Iranian relations operated in heteronomic structures. United States created rules that determined Iran to be dependent on it. The country under Shah's rule became more developed and powerful, but not independent. Thanks to...

There are not many countries in the world whose relations were as turbulent as in the case of the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since 1979 the U.S. military, diplomatic and economic assistance towards Iran has been replaced by sanctions and hostilities. Author of the M.A. thesis On the Edge of Dependency: Iran in the Foreign Policy of the United States, 1979 - 2009 assumes that the geopolitical interests of the United States were to make Iran weak, isolated and dependent on the periphery of the world system, thus to enforce a heteronomous structure of domination. To answer the research questions the critical discourse analysis has been performed. Based on the constructivist rule-based approach and speech act theory the U.S. political elites in the process of meeting their foreign policy objectives should have been using a commissive language. The analysis of the U.S. political discourse has shown, however, the United States since 1979 strived for hierarchical structure of domination over Iran. The long-standing lack of stability in the U.S.-Iranian relations can be therefore explained that Iranian political elites reject the rules Washington has been trying to apply.