Recent years have seen considerable debate about the shifting contours of international order, regarding whether or not there is a “Western liberal world order” and the power and influence of its illiberal challengers. Indeed, the old certainties of the bipolar international system created by the Cold War are an increasingly distant memory, and the unipolar moment of unchecked US dominance is now seen as an interregnum in the seemingly inevitable move toward a multipolar future for global politics. As a country of major geostrategic importance, Iran often has been a key player in the shifts that have occurred in both regional and global geopolitics over the last hundred years. This includes being an arena for Russian tsarist, Ottoman, and British imperial competition during World War I and later being a founding member of the League of Nations. As an important oil producer and a state that saw itself as a leading postcolonial actor, Iran was also one of the founding members of OPEC and the G77. From its experience of imperial penetration by European powers in the early twentieth century to its emergence as a key Western ally and “regional policeman” in the Cold War era, Iran has had to engage with the shifting interests of global powers and associated notions of international order. These have had a critical influence on the development of modern Iran, shaping its politics, society, and international relations and helping to lay the foundations for opposition to the prevailing norms that governed Iran’s relations with the world up until 1979.

This roundtable section seeks to shed light on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s agency in its relationships with the world order and regional orders by focusing on snapshots of its complex relationships at the time of writing. The intention in so doing is to draw attention to the fact that there are multiple dimensions to the Islamic Republic’s relations with both world order and regional orders. It also should be noted that these dynamics do not exist in isolation from historical trajectories that have led to this period, nor in isolation from domestic factors. This roundtable can only paint part of this picture. In brief, world order here is understood as socially constructed norms and values that may or may not be used to underpin global governance and institutions. Similarly, regional order also comprises socially constructed norms and values. Different bodies of scholarship use different words for international/world/global order. These terms are used interchangeably in this roundtable.

A major rupture in Iran’s relationship with international order came with a revolution that was, in part, predicated on rectifying what the revolutionary leadership saw as submission to the interests of Iran’s then-Western allies, most prominently the United States. The heavy emphasis on combatting perceived injustice that characterized Ayatollah Khomeini’s worldview was transposed onto a foreign policy discourse that put the postrevolutionary state squarely at odds with both sides of the Cold War divide. Indeed, born into the bipolar divide of the Cold War, Khomeini’s famous dictum of “neither East nor West” played a formative role in charting the course of the new regime’s international relations. However, particular opprobrium was saved for the United States and its perceived hegemonic desires. The Islamic Republic has faced, since its inception, a number of transformative events that have shaped both the international order and Iran’s place within it. The end of the Cold War and subsequent implosion of the Soviet Union saw the power of Iran’s chief international foe, the United States, ascendant. More generally, the establishment of the Islamic Republic is seen as heralding the arrival of political Islam into modern global politics, with scholars and policymakers seeking to make sense of this unique form of theocratic government and other broadly contemporaneous events, such as the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and assassination of Anwar Sadat by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981.

Iran as a (post)revolutionary state has both engaged with and confronted the conditions that have shaped the international system in which it finds itself. It is the ways in which Iran under the Islamic Republic deals with the multiple systems that make up its domestic, regional, and international environments that are the focus of this roundtable. Looming large over Iran’s international calculus is its often-troubled relationship with the United States, which has shaped the Islamic Republic’s own sense of ontological (in)security. This is well-covered in the extant literature on Iranian foreign policy, and is understandable given the history and current enmity of the relationship.

However, our aim with this roundtable is to highlight that, despite the key role that the United States has played in shaping Iran's engagement with the world, the Islamic Republic’s engagement with multiple systems that shape its international existence go much further than this fraught relationship. This is evident at multiple levels, such as its responses to broader transformations of global politics; the impact of developments within the Middle East and other adjoining areas of strategic importance, including the Caucasus and Central Asia; and also on the domestic front, where Iran’s contested politics and its own ethno-religious heterogeneity have important implications for its regional engagements and regional orders. Importantly, Iran’s Kurdish, Baluchi, Azeri, and Arab transborder populations play a significant role in these dynamics.

This roundtable starts with Evaleila Pesaran’s contribution, which draws attention to the Islamic Republic’s positioning “outside” the international system. Pesaran describes how the Islamic Republic also has exploited this position in its relations with the East and the South. Given its regional significance in an increasingly multipolar world, and as a founder of OPEC and the G77, it is perhaps not surprising that the Islamic Republic was invited to join not only the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), but also BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and other newer members). Significantly, both these intergovernmental organizations are led by Russia and China, two actors considered by many to be the leading challengers to a so-called Western liberal world order. Building on Pesaran’s intervention, Ahmad Badawi Mustapha’s contribution shows that the Islamic Republic is indeed an important actor in initiatives that have the potential to reconfigure the existing Western-dominated global order.

The concurrent emergence of China as a global power also has offered avenues for Iran to circumvent US-led efforts at containment, as discussed by William Figueroa in his contribution. However, as Figueroa notes, the hedging-oriented strategy of Iran’s Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) neighbors is perhaps a more fitting guide to the development of Sino-American competition in the region. The Islamic Republic’s efforts to develop a more overtly Eurasian focus to its foreign policy is born of its need to connect with other ostensibly anti-US actors in global politics such as Russia and China, and also to enhance its connectivity with the geopolitical space to its north. The desire to reconnect with territories that had previously fallen under Iranian rule or nominal control in the Caucasus and Central Asia has helped to further establish this Eurasian dimension to Iran’s foreign policy, as highlighted in Jan Tomek’s contribution on Iran’s role in the post-Soviet Central Eurasian regional order.

Within the Middle East, the Iran–Iraq War and regional states’ fears of Iran’s revolutionary zeal left the Islamic Republic strategically isolated throughout the 1980s. However, it was in this period that Iran began to actively cultivate its regional alliance network, drawing on its deep-seated links with Lebanon’s Shiʿi communities to help establish Hezbollah, thus beginning to enhance its strategic depth in the region, in part through resistance to Israel. Tehran’s ability to make common cause with coreligionists across the region was furthered through its links with the Iraqi opposition to Saddam, resulting in the close ties it maintains with Shi’i political factions there today. This also was extended to key non–Twelver Shi’i actors, including the Syrian state under Assad and the Houthi movement in Yemen. Ever wary of accusations of sectarianism, the Islamic Republic has long sought to emphasize the unifying power of the Palestinian cause, and has included Sunni groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad under the Axis of Resistance banner. The position of Israel has been prominent in the discourse of the Islamic Republic since its founding, helping to embed the Palestinian cause in Iran’s regional foreign policy, as Olivia Glombitza's contribution examines in relation to changing domestic politics within Iran.

In the era of unchecked US power, Tehran became increasingly surrounded by US forces in the Middle East as containment of Iran became a cornerstone of a US-sponsored regional security order in the 1990s and into the new millennium. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s feeling of being intentionally and actively surrounded by hostile forces was further compounded with the advent of the US-led Global War on Terrorism. Although this led to the removal of two of Tehran’s chief neighboring foes, in the form of Saddam in Iraq and (albeit temporarily) the Taliban in Afghanistan, it brought US troops to Iran’s borders and set the stage for Iran’s involvement in counterinsurgencies aimed at ejecting the United States from its neighboring countries. The close alignment of many of Iran’s neighbors with the United States also has helped to shape regional order in the Middle East, particularly in the period following the Arab uprisings starting in 2011. It was during this period that key Western allies in the region adopted a highly securitized, and often sectarianized, approach to Iran, which compounded geopolitical competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular and also emboldened Israel to take ever stronger actions against Iranian interests in the region.

In the final contribution to this roundtable, Banafsheh Keynoush reflects on the complex, triangular diplomacy between Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, in light of the Gaza conflict following the events of October 7, 2023. The regional contagion of this conflict brought Iran and Israel into direct military confrontation after years of shadow war, and led to direct US strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. At the time of writing, the fate of Iran’s long-disputed nuclear program remains unclear. Furthermore, the wider ramifications of Israeli strikes against Iran and its regional allies, and Iran’s ultimate response to these setbacks, are yet to be fully seen, leaving the regional order in a dangerous state of flux.