Unraveling Iraq-Iran Relations during Turbulent Period (1958-1988): Regime Security Concern in Foreign Policy

Abstract

Foreign policy is traditionally an important tool for states to protect their sovereignty and national-regime security. Therefore, the main objective of any state's foreign policy is to ensure its sovereignty and national- regime security and to realize its regional and international interests. However, foreign policy is a process where both internal factors and external factors interact and shape the preferences and the outcomes of the ruling cadres. Especially, in non-democratic countries where state security is equivalent to the maintenance of regime survival, the internal political calculations of ruling elites dominate the foreign policy. In this context, this article will revisit Iraq-Iran relations between 1958 and 1988 to display the determinant weight of the regime security concerns on the decision-making process. Theoretically, this article will attempt to make a modest contribution to the regional studies which dispute and refuse the outside-inside separation on the formulation of foreign policy with the regime security approach which draws largely on the arguments and the concepts advanced by Neoclassical realist studies. the regime security approach which is.