Iran in World Politics

Description

Why is Iran continuously in the news? How has the Islamic Republic developed ideologically since the 1979 revolution? What are the best ways of comprehending the country at this critical juncture in its history? These are some of the questions at the heart of Arshin Adib-Moghaddam’s book, which offers novel methodological and theoretical insights in explaining the foreign relations and domestic politics of post-revolutionary Iran. From the nuclear issue, to the perpetual stand-off with the United States, from the future of Iranian democracy to Iranian-Arab relations, from American neo-conservatism to Islamic utopian-romanticism, from Avicenna to Ayatollah Khomeini, the author guides the reader through the complexities that bedevil our understanding of contemporary Iran. In exposing the limitations of mainstream representations of the country and the wider Muslim world, Iran in World Politics makes a powerful case for ‘critical Iranian studies’, for a new system of thought that pluralises both the way we see Iran, and the international politics enveloping the country.

Author(s)

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is Reader in Comparative Politics and International Relations and Chair of the Centre for Iranian Studies at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy (2006, 2009), Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic (Hurst/OUP, 2008, 2010), and A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism (Hurst/OUP 2011). Educated at the Universities of Hamburg, American (Washington DC) and Cambridge, where he received his MPhil and PhD, he was the first Jarvis Doctorow Fellow in International Relations and Peace Studies at St. Edmund Hall and the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Since 2007, Adib-Moghaddam has been with the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS. He is a frequent contributor to leading newspapers and TV channels around the world.