IRAN AND THE UNITED NATIONS’ SECURITY COUNCIL RELATIONS: THE CASE OF THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM

Abstract

This thesis will explore the nature of the relations between Iran and the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC) with a special focus on the Iranian nuclear program and its effect on the nature of this relationship. While exploring the relation of this International Organization and Iran, dominant roles that any of the Permanent Five members of the UNSC have had on this relationship will also be demonstrated.

Using the historical study as a research method helps shed light on all the events that took place between Iran and the UNSC or its member nations since 1941 up until today. This method will highlight specific key instances within the timeline that are essential to explore through the case study approach and that will further help unravel this complex political phenomenon. The events pertaining to this study belong to three stages of the timeline:

The first stage is 1941-1978, which explores the period after World War II and the partitioning the world among world powers, the establishment of the UN, the Cold War, the Pahlavi dynasty, and the UK, US, USSR involvement in Iran.

The second stage is 1979-2006, which is the period after the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and the relaunch of the Iranian nuclear program under the new anti-Western regime and UNSC sanctions on Iran.

The third and final stage is 2007- Present, which goes from the rise of the tension between Iran and mainly the US out of the P5 members all the way to negotiations towards the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and signing the deal, back to the US’s withdrawal from the deal, Iran’s response to US infringements and the UNSC’s position of Iran’s reassumed endeavors.

Iran has been a field of geostrategic confrontations by world powers through different stages of international turmoil. Hence, its political endeavors have always been a reaction to the situation going on within the dominant international sphere who is mainly the UNSC today. This was the situation before the UNSC was established and continued to be the case after as well, meaning that the political endeavor on Iran’s end never just aimed at the UNSC as a whole, but rather at specific member nations such as the US. The same can be said for the US who uses its unipolarity to steer the UNSC and other P4 members to a foreign policy decision that benefits it as an independent state as well.