7. Iran’s International Relations in the Face of Imperial Interpolarity: The “Look to the East” Policy and Multifaceted Impact of Sanctions

After having examined Iran’s international relations in the period from “9/11” to the initial phase of the Iraq War (–2004), this chapter deals with the ensuing period until Iran’s new president Rouhani takes office in 2013. On the one hand, by the mid-2000s, Iran emerged as the region’s indispensable power—as a combined result of the U.S. occupation “quagmires” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of Iran’s successful regional policies relying on Offensive Realist prescripts—boosted by the political successes of its regional allies and the spike in oil prices leading to record revenues. At a time when Iranian hardliners had assumed supremacy domestically, the IRI turned out to be the victor of the U.S. neo-conservatives’ “regime change” operations. On the other, the “nuclear crisis” that emerged in 2002 put Iran increasingly at odds with Western powers, keeping the threat of war alive and subjected it to unprecedented international sanctions from the mid-2000s onwards.