Conclusions

Abstract

From its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran struggled with two hard-to-reconcile approaches to foreign policy. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the “Iranian Trotsky” who wanted to export the revolution to Muslim countries occupied the idealist part of the spectrum. His chief lieutenant, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was much more of a realist. He believed that the new republic should concentrate on economic viability for which a more traditional foreign policy was required. Making the idealist-realist schism worse was the negotiated political order whereby the Revolutionary Guards and other parastatals operated virtually outside the purview of the state. The resulting opaqueness and confusion of the foreign policy-making process have vexed policymakers, academics, and lay observers alike. Still, the detailed analysis of the major foreign policy issues has uncovered specific patterns that should help to decipher this complex system.