This book critically develops and discusses Iran's geopolitical imaginations and explores its various foreign-policy schools of thought and their controversies. Accounting for both domestic and the international balance of power, the book theorizes the post-unipolar world order of the 2000s, dubbed "imperial interpolarity", examines Iran's relations with non-Western great-powers in that era, and offers a critique of the "Rouhani doctrine" and its economic and foreign-policy visions. Ali Fathollah-Nejad is Senior Lecturer in Middle East and Comparative Politics at the University of Tübingen's Institute of Political Science, where he is also Coordinator of the joint Master's program with the American University in Cairo (AUC). He is also a Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP), following his Visiting Fellowship at the Brookings Doha Center. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Department of Development Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and was a post-doctoral Associate with the Harvard Kennedy School's Iran Project.

Autorentext
Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a GermanIranian political scientist focusing on Iran, the Middle East, and the post-unipolar world order. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Department of Development Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and was the winner of 2016/17 post-doctoral fellowship of the Harvard Kennedy School's Iran Project. He is an affiliated researcher with the Centre d'Études de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement (CECID) at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Freie Universität (FU) Berlin's Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics and the AfroMiddle East Centre (AMEC), South Africa's think-tank specialized on the Middle East. Most recently, he was Senior Lecturer in Middle East and Comparative Politics at the University of Tübingen and adjunct Assistant Professor in the Ph.D. program of Qatar University's Gulf Studies Center. Ali is also the former Iran expert of the Brookings Institution in Doha (BDC, 201720) and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP, 201518). In 2020, he published two monographs: The Islamic Republic of Iran Four Decades On: The 2017/18 Protests Amid a Triple Crisis and The Politics of Culture in Times of Rapprochement: European Cultural and Academic Exchange with Iran (201516).

Inhalt
1 Introduction2 A Critical Geopolitics of International Relations: A Theoretical Derivation3 Iranian Geopolitical Imaginations: A Critical Account4 The Islamic Republic of Iran: StateSociety Complex and the Political Elite's Political and Geopolitical Culture5 Foreign-Policy Schools of Thought and Debates in the IRI6 Iran's International Relations in the Face of U.S. Imperial Hubris: From 9/11 to the Iraq War7 Iran's International Relations in the Face of Imperial Interpolarity: The Look to the East Policy and Multifaceted Impact of Sanctions8 Conclusions