British Foreign Policy Towards The I.R. Iran With Special Reference To The Two Main British Governing Parties: 2000-2015
The Middle East is in flux. Iran throughout the Middle East carries considerable political influence, and weight. Iran as a key strategic power in the Middle East can help to bring about stability, and security in the region. The Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Syria, to name a few, could all benefit from the traditional strategic role of Iran in the changing Middle East.
Warming up of Anglo-Iranian relations, first signifies that the West, and particularly so, the United States have eventually come to realize, that, accommodation rather than isolation will be the key to stability in the Middle East. Thus, negotiation rather than confrontation should be order of the day with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Secondly, warming up of an Anglo-Iranian relation could help the West to unite, the ever so tight knot so to speak in the rich Middle East, in the age of economic globalization, and free trade, which requires political stability.
A Tehran-London entente at this point in time, not only will be conducive to the Middle East, but in view of what has just been said, in this article, could also bring about détente in Irano-West relations.
Conclusion
No aspect of policy making is more intriguing and complex than foreign policy. As the world has become increasingly a maze of interdependent relationships, with economic, cultural, military, social, and even ethnic considerations making their weight felt upon every decision, from its inception down to its execution and implementation, so have the agencies of decision making become increasingly numerous, and complex, if not always interdependent. It is hard to trace a policy decision to one single actor; it is difficult to apply a rational model of mean and ends to a decision taken, it is virtually impossible to evaluate a decision, i.e. to say when it has succeeded, and when it has failed; it is hazardous to try to impute clear motives to the policy makers and trace the origins of decisions to such motives. Evaluating, and analyzing any state’s foreign policy towards, another state, therefore, is a complex examination of various factors, as has been the case of Irano-UK relation, 2000-2015, which was attempted in this article.
The United Kingdom’s dependence on overseas trade, which was discussed in this article in respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran, as an example, one may say, in any case, means that economic matters are always in the forefront among foreign policy issues. Since World War II, the most consistent national concern has been the maintenance of a sufficient volume of manufactured exports, along with the so-called invisible earnings from various services, to pay for needed imports of food, and raw materials, as well as to compensate for Britain’s overseas expenditures for military and economic-aid purposes.
The reasons for Britain’s assumption, that it cannot protect itself against aggression without help are obvious. The island’s location, vulnerability, and limited resources require that protection come from collective arrangement with other nations, as in the case of Anglo-American Special Relation, which in this article was put in the context of Anglo-Iranian relation, with a shift in British foreign policy towards the Americans in the mid-2000s, until 2015.
Notes:
1. G.A. Jones, The Political Structure, (London: Longman, 2002), p. 55.
2. Ibid.
3. S.E. Finger, Comparative Government, (Middle sex: Penguin, 2001), p.158.
4. V.ALBERTINI, Decolonization, (London: Africana Publishing, 2002), p.115.
5. Ibid
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid, p.218.
8. Ibid.
9. S.E. Finger, op. cit., p.165.
10. Ibid.
11. D.JUDD and P.SLINN, The Evolution of the Modern Commonwealth 1902-80, London: Mc Millan, 1992, p.87.
12. K.O MORGAN, Labour in Power, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p.229.
13. Ibid, p.230.
14. Iran-Britain Relations.mht.20/12/2010.
15. Iran-United Kingdom relations-Wikipedia, 12/17/2010.
16. Herald Tribune, 22nd January, 2006.
17. En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93 United_Kingdom_relations.
18. C.R. ATTLEE, As It Happened, London: Heinemann, 1954, p. 170.
19. United Kingdom-Iran Foreign Relations, Wikimedia Commons
20. Ibid.
21. Brown Issues Iran nuclear warning, www.us-ukinterventions.org/Iran-fullchron.html.
22. Ibid.
23. See A-R. Moussavizadeh’s article in The British Labour Party and the War in Iraq in2203, Middle East Quarterly, center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies, Vol.12 No.2, Summer, 2006, Tehran, I.R. Iran.
24. S.E. Finger, op. cit., p.164.
25. M.BELOFF and G.PEELE, The Government of the United Kingdom, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), p.154.
26. Ibid.
27. L.A. MONK, Britain 1945-1990, (London: G.Bell & Sons Ltd., 1996) p. 100.
28. UK-Iran relation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E3%80%95united-kingdomrelations.
29. Ibid
