Political-Security Relations Between Iran and Pakistan in Southwest Asia: Reasons and Consequences

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, International Relations, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Guilan, Guilan, Iran.

Abstract

Following the Islamic revolution in Iran, the dominance of the discourse of political Islam and the increase of its impact on the Pakistani society during the last few decades, and due to ideological and security issues, the two friendly and neighboring countries could not have acceptable relations. For this reason, the general opinion considers the nature of relations between Iran and Pakistan as critical, unreliable and divergent, and different geopolitical alignments in the region have pushed the two nations further apart. Considering this issue, the main question of the research is as follows: “what factors have increased the differences and competition between Iran and Pakistan after the Islamic Revolution?”. The research hypothesis indicates that “the most important factor in the competitive nature of Iran and Pakistan relations is the security and political conditions derived from the incompatible and challenging environment of the neighborhood and the geopolitical competition of the two countries in the region of Southwest Asia”. Among the incompatible geopolitical challenges and competitions between the two countries, the ideological and ethnic issues, the border and the India-Saudi factor can be mentioned. The research method is descriptive-analytic and data gathering procedure is based on documentary-library sources.

Keywords

Main Subjects


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