NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF POLITICAL STUDIES AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
PHD THESIS SUMMARY
PhD Supervisor
PROF.UNIV.DR. TEODOR MELEȘCANU
PhD Candidate
Irina-Elena ERHAN
BUCHAREST
2017
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF POLITICAL STUDIES AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
PERSIAN IDENTITY ELEMENTS’ INFLUENCE ON THE IRANIAN STYLE OF DIPLOMATIC NEGOCIATIONS
CASE STUDY: THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR ACCORD
PhD Supervisor
PROF.UNIV.DR. TEODOR MELEȘCANU
PhD Candidate
Irina-Elena ERHAN
BUCHAREST
2017
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Notes on translations, phonetic transcripts and calendar dates
INTRODUCTION
Presentation of the research theme and objectives
Research hypothesis
Research motivation
Research relevance and accuracy
Research theoretical framework
Methodological coordinates
Thesis structure
Bibliographic references
I. THEORETICAL FUNDAMENTALS REGARDING THE CONCEPT OF DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS
I.1. Key concepts within the negotiation process
I.2. Thought paradigms on the “negotiation” concept
I.2.1. The complex interdependence theory and the network theory
I.2.2. The rational choice theory, games theory and the behavioral decision theory
I.2.3. The social capital theory
I.3. Contemporary frameworks of negotiation analysis
I.4. International negotiations
I.4.1. Putnam’s two-tier game theory
I.4.2. James Rosenau’s analysis model on foreign politics
I.5. The negotiation’s cultural dimension
I.5.1. Geert Hofstede’s theory on cultural dimension
I.5.2. Edward T. Hall’s cultural model
Conclusions
II.THE IRANIAN STRATEGIC THINKING
II.1. Persian identity particularities
II.1.1. Shia as an expression of the Persian ethos
II.1.1.1. The Iranian thinking regarding the throne-altar connection
II.1.1.2. The interpretation, in terms of politics, of religious concepts
II.1.2. The cultural and linguistic element in strengthening the national identity
II.1.2.1. Iranianism and nationalism
II.1.2.2. The cultural authenticity current as a paradigm of Iranian nationalism
II.1.2.3. The equation “aryan” – “persian” – “iranian”
II.2. Iranian thinking patterns on foreign politics
II.2.1. World perception
II.2.2. Strategic principles and features of the Iranian foreign politics
II.2.3. Mobility and faction in resolving political objectives
II.2.3.1. Post revolutionary political elite
II.2.3.2. Ideological polarization and political decision
Conclusions
III. THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR NARRATIVE
III.1. The Iranian military doctrine and the threat perception
III.2. The critical interpretation of the Iranian nuclear ambitions in a realistic, liberal and constructive paradigm
III.3. The nuclear program. Sequencing and motivation
III.3.1. The nuclear option in terms of nationalism
III.3.1.1. The foreign conspiracy theory
III.4. The nuclear program and the religious justification
III.4.1. The messianism Shia in nuclear terms
Conclusions
IV. THE IRANIAN STYLE OF DIPLOMATIC NEGOCIATIONS. CASE STUDY: THE NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS FROM JUNE 2013 – JULY 2015
IV.1. The negotiations between Iran and the international community as “playing on two levels”
IV.1.1. The preference and Iranian coalition architecture in the nuclear field
IV.1.1.1. Institutions and formal decision bodies
IV.1.1.2. Informal decision networks
IV.1.2. The win-set dimension in nuclear negotiations with the American side
IV.1.3. Pragmatism and compromise in nuclear terms
IV.1.4. The etiquette of the Iranian negotiations team and the role of interpersonal relations
IV.1.5. Positions and internal differences towards nuclear nogotiations
IV.2. The intercultural context of negotiations with the Iranian side
Conclusions
CONCLUSIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The present paper sets as a general objective the analysis of the Iranian identity construct in order to uncover those instrumental elements of the diplomatic negotiation style specific to Teheran's political and diplomatic regime, which continues to be at the core of international concerns for over three decades through its Islamic Revolution and through a controversial nuclear program.
Without proposing an exhaustive treatment of the classical and modern Iranian political culture, as far as it represents a landmark vector for current ideologies and for the justification of the nuclear program, the research seeks to eliminate the black and white perceptions of Tehran's way of making politics and of acting externally by evaluating its strategic motivations and by shaping a multidimensional model of analysis of the manifestations involved in the construction of the Iranian diplomatic pattern, useful for detecting any forms of manipulation and, in some sociopolitical contexts, of violence .
In an attempt to identify the resorts of the Iranian nation's system of relations and to reflect upon the operational mechanisms of the Iranian nuclear diplomacy, the research aims towards the following specific objectives:
- explaining the plurality of the Iranian vision in terms of religion and sacredness, tradition, history and political culture, as Iranian political thinking is the consequence of millennia of Persian civilization and of Shiite Islam membership, profoundly incriminated by the faulty management of relations with the West, thus reveling the way in which it harmonizes or opposes Western concepts about the diplomatic negotiation process, and how it influences the issue of international relations;
- the analysis of post revolutionary Iranian sociopolitical directions, the multidimensionality of formal and informal power centers, and of patterns of thinking in foreign politics, given the trend of "balancing" the Iranian state, translated by an institutionalization of the elite's faction, each governmental body offering its members, which were selected based on political or religious clientelism, a social status, benefits for own purposes, and the penetration of certain power networks, including the nuclear ones;
- providing a framework for understanding the Iranian nuclear strategic culture by sequencing the nuclear program, enunciating the ideological and historical motives, and explaining the nuclear narrative through the lens of realistic/neorealistic, liberal/neoliberal and constructive paradigms;
- the drafting of an Iranian diplomatic negotiation style as evidenced by the nuclear-related negotiations between 2013 and 2015, by applying Robert Putnam's two-tier game theory, James Rosenau's analysis model on foreign politics and the proposed cultural models by Hofstede and Edward T. Hall.
From an analytical perspective, the approach will focus on the Persian diplomatic behavior and the ideology of the Islamic Revolution as an instrumental element of the twentieth century through the establishment of the first Islamic state, and which represents both the beginning of global Islamic reassertion and the emergence of a new model of Islam negotiating positions in the international system
By bringing with it a discourse radicalization in terms of religious rigorism, through the theocratic rule of the state, anchored in the rigid precepts of the duodeciman schiism, Iranian leadership managed to capture the international community by resorting to rhetoric and the semantic exploitation of some religious and political terms, that is why the paper seeks to decode the messages conveyed by Tehran, given that, for the Iranian people, language and rhetoric are perceived as a mirror of the Persian millenarian civilization heritage.
Having culture as a reference, history and language as coalescing forces of the Iranian nation and the Shiite Islam as the dominant socio-cultural system of Iranian society, the research will also address the way in which for over three decades the Islamic Revolution has disturbed this nation, challenged either to remain tributary to the velāyat-e faqīh doctrine, or to propose a new form of radical re-election of Islamic practices that calls for a new ethic of the Quran, in the context of a society deeply adapting to global challenges.
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With the regard to the research hypothesis, this is: unless the identity mechanisms that underlie Iranian diplomacy are understood, then Tehran's strategies in the nuclear field cannot be anticipated.
At the conceptual level, the paper aims to demonstrate the socio-historical and ideological nature of the Iranian nuclear program's motivation, re-establishing itself as a security instrument and key actor towards international recognition, answering the questions “Why is a State animated by the idea of building a nuclear weapon?” or “Does Iran perceives nuclear proliferation as means of accessing power?”, provides the key to understanding Iran's nuclear aspirations as it calls for immense financial and intellectual resources.
In this context, it is imperative to insist on the strategic importance of integrating Iran's culture and mentality in the process of diplomatic negotiation, the need to recognize and understand Iranian people's beliefs, values and attitudes in order to better interact with them, but also of decoding the Iranian discourse, which can serve as a force multiplier in diplomatic discussions, providing a clear insight into how the various elements of the Iranian cultural puzzle illustrate a given situation.
However, to validate or to reject the research hypothesis, we have recourse to:
- an analysis of the relationship between religion, culture, language, and political thinking, to the condition that Shia is captured by Iranian leadership, in order to justify the actions and strengthen the authority of the exponents of revolutionary ideology. Nevertheless, it should also be emphasized that Shiite Islam did not cause the differences between Tehran and the Western Chancelleries of the world, but it has to be analyzed from the perspective of how it is politically contextualized in order to obtain its own benefits, including the nuclear file. On the other hand, the linguistic field has decisively contributed to the completion of the Shiite Iranian state, the Persian language surviving and having the capacity to rejuvenate and reinvent itself despite the invasions of the Persian territories throughout history. (Emami, 1965, p. 6). Global developments also tend to force Iranian theocracy to rethink its approach towards discussing partners by reference to its cultural values. At present, literature and, above all, Persian poetry continue to play a decisive role in animating the Persian national sentiment, the speeches of political and religious elites in public markets often end up with verses from Ferdowsī's "Šāhnāmeh" or references to the Iranian National Revival during the Sunni Arabic Dynasties of the 8th-13th centuries;
- an assessment of the Iranian foreign policy through ideological filter, social specificity and the mobilization of various political and religious groups in order to seize political, economic and military power;
- a specter of the Iranian strategic thinking in the nuclear field, to understand the short, medium and long-term Iranian spirits and interests of developing a dual-use nuclear program, given that an Iranian possessor of weapons of mass destruction would generate incremental disputes at regional and global level;
- applying Putnam's "two-tier game" model in negotiations between Iran and the international community between 2013 and 2015 to demonstrate that Tehran's foreign politics decisions are the result of simultaneous computation of domestic and international implications.
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The option to analyze the Iranian style of diplomatic negotiations is not coincidental, the political discourse and actions initiated by the Tehran regime since 1979 claiming the need to decode the endogenous and exogenous factors that shape the Iranian manner of making politics, setting up control mechanisms and causal relations and to analyze, in a pragmatic and ideological key, the Iranian directions on the nuclear file. Revolutionary activism has modified diplomatic behavior and promoted new players with new stakes, which have transformed Iran into a problematic space that has definitively become a global concern with the revival of the ambition to take possession of nuclear technology and developing the military dimension of the nuclear program. The nuclear component drew Iran's portrayal into the hegemonic aggression and hegemonic intentions, the nuclear weapons perceived in apocalyptic terms, becoming an instrument of affirmation as a regional actor and accentuation of the dialectic "friend" - "enemy." States that secretly attempt to own such weapons are classified as having deviant and unpredictable behaviors capable of overturning the global order and rallying behind ideologies contrary to the principles and norms of international law.
The “Clash of civilizations”[1] has become a thesis that has definitively affected international order, and in this rethinking of international relations, Iran tends to be a state which, at first analysis, seems to conceive relations with the West in terms of confrontation, violation of the Treaty of Nuclear Nonproliferation and of virulent speeches towards Israel. Also, institutional dualism, the mix of religion in the political field and the revolutionary Shiite ideology give Iran the reputation of an actor that can only be treated in terms of offensive military action, although the analysis of the Iranian regime's actions over the last 38 years indicates the defensive way of preserving its national interests, the nuclear program being ultimately the source of satisfying the need to survive the regime and recognizing Iran's importance on the global and regional map, and the nuclear accord is the consequence of Iranian political realism of returning on the international scale and overcoming the status of “pariah” of the international system.
Being the subject of global attention, Iran claims for an excellent knowledge of the principles and concepts governing the Iranian universe, and the option for its diplomatic negotiation style as a space of analysis is motivated by the way in which the 1979 revolution changed the Iranian diplomatic code, embedding an atypical note that continues to surprise to date.
Therefore, the research is based on the manner in which Iranian leadership has built its own negotiating style, materialized by innovative forms of discursive and attitudinal expression, which attest to a profound change in the patterns of diplomatic interaction. The novelty of the phenomenon and the significant adherence of the conservative and reformist factions to this new model of negotiation motivate the interest in making a radiography of Tehran's negotiation style, also emphasized by its superiority: the culture towards its Arab neighbors, that exhibits an anti-Arab nationalist form in today's Iran; religious, in the conditions under which Shia was assimilated as its own form of resistance to the Sunni Islam, predominantly existent in the Arab world; but also linguistic, through one of the oldest Indo-European languages.
Thus, with a distinct Shiit-Islamic identity, doubled by an immemorial history, the Iranian model of diplomatic negotiation represents a challenge, especially since the relations between the West and Iran have been marked since 1979 by numerous attempts to negotiate, in various formats and on different levels of activity.
At the same time, in the history of the discourse changes towards the Western community (the presidential mandates of Akbar Hāšemī Rafsanğānī and Moḥammad Ḫātamī) a manipulative tendency was detected to preserve their own interests, which motivates the analysis of this diplomatic style in which cultural, linguistic and religious factors become effective tools in the portfolio of propaganda and manipulation. Also, taking advantage of Maḥmūd Aḥmadīnežād's democratic removal of power, the new Iranian political actors seem willing to outline a new diplomatic speech strategy, realizing that geographic position, natural resources, the influence on the Shiite area, and the global developments can give Iran the status of a tactical pawn in the Middle East.
A Shiite State located in a more or less hostile sunni Arab area, with a Persian identity placed in opposition to the Arab identity, driven by a revolutionary Islamic theocracy contaminated by an atypical nationalism, Iran provokes an expanded palette of feelings, from fears to admiration, often justified by the insufficient knowledge of this land from a historical, linguistic, religious, cultural and ideological perspective.
The research topic is current and timely because, with the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian nation is associated with political violence, the terrorist phenomenon, its inclusion on the “Axis of Evil”, socio-cultural differences, anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric and the nuclear file, few authors addressing the Persian identity dynamics in defining the Iranian style of diplomatic negotiation, having as a starting point the fecundity of Persian civilization and culture over which the Islamic religion grafted into Shia interpretation.
This type of critical approach is relevant because in recent years we have witnessed the emergence of the trend to return to tradition, authenticity and cultural identity, often rebuilt according to the needs and myths of the moment, and Tehran opting for this tendency out of the desire to anchor, in the global collective mentality, its affiliation to a great civilization of the world.
Characterized by a hybrid regime that does not fit in either the military paradigm or the dictatorial term in the strict dictionary sense of the term, Iran tends to remain docked in the pattern of limited, highly fragmented democracies characterized by a mix of parallel institutions that create parallel authorities, competing interests, and multiple entities that enable ideological factionalism to thrive in all state institutions.
All contemporary perceptions have been built around prejudices which portrays Iran as a terrorist financing state, which raises permanent controversies, and the superficial analyzes, the erroneous interpretations or gaps in the complexity of being the Iranian people have canceled millennia of history and unmistakable civilization, and led to the design of a deformed image, to which the Iranian people responded by confinement and victimization strategies to the West, against whom they cannot trust.
On the other hand, the Iranian foreign politics model goes beyond the western framework of analysis, being assimilated to the principle of "Neither East, nor West," in which the world is complex, governed by forces such as religion and divine justice, and in which spiritual and cultural variables exceed in value the power of the money.
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Although it falls within the category of undergraduate studies in the field of political sciences, for our research we will opt for a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to Iranian diplomacy in order to identify the elements of strategic culture that influence the diplomatic negotiation style, as the diplomat with specific and a distinct personality is the product of the linguistic, cultural and spiritual factors of the society in which it originates, and the global surprise of occurrence in diplomatic relations can bring clarity about the success or failure of the negotiations between Western and Iranian partners.
The theoretical framework of the scientific approach focuses on the paradigm of realism / neorealism, liberalism / neoliberalism and constructivism that dominate the field of international relations, which we will use as methodological tools of argumentation, comparison and analysis of the process of diplomatic negotiation itself and intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of Iran to enter the nuclear club in particular.