Shi’i Diplomacy: religious identity and foreign policy in the Axis of Resistance

Wastnidge, Edward (2023). Shi’i Diplomacy: religious identity and foreign policy in the Axis of Resistance. In: Mandaville, Peter ed. The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States use Religion in Foreign Policy. Oxford University Press, pp. 113–129.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197605806.003.0007

Abstract

Since the founding of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s leaders have sought to harness both universalistic and particularistic Shi’i claims to legitimacy in the Muslim world. Beginning with attempts to the actively export the Islamic revolution in the 1980s, Iran has invested in building its diplomatic and religious infrastructure, expanding its religious outreach activities across the Shi’i world, drawing on its position as something of a Shi’i metropole in a demonstration of its growing soft power. This chapter will explore how religious identity informs the diplomacy of the world’s pre-eminent theocracy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, focusing on how religiously grounded notions of justice have informed its foreign policy thinking and diplomatic reach.

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