India, Russia and Iran: a New Study on “North — South” International Transport Corridor

The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) has made impressive progress in making boat, street, and rail courses that transport cargo between India, Iran and Russia and countries of the European Union and Central Asia. It connects India Ocean, Iran, the Persian Gulf nations, through the nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia with Russia and mainland Europe. This task was a reaction to Eurasian coordination, “Extraordinary Eurasian Partnership” (Russia, 2011) including “One Belt, One Road” (China, 2013) and The Silk Road. By rethinking the Integration and Economic Potential of the INSTC and its importance for the partaking nations, it is feasible to utilize the rationale of the aggregate game plan of the Eurasian space in light of a legitimate concern for all member states. However, the first trail train via INSTC, departing from Helsinki on June 21, 2021, arrived at its destination at twice the speed of the existing Suez Canal route, proving the timeliness and competitiveness but missing rout in Iran Rasht-Astara railway line still remain the challenging problem for the Iranian government as well as for India and Russia.

Socio-Individual Prerequisites of Energy Transition in Iran: Investigating Public Acceptance of Solar Panel Technology in Rural Areas

Iran has inordinate natural capacity to benefit from solar energy all year. Interim plansby the Iranian government have been implemented to develop energy transition in ruralareas, however, the outcomes have not been promising so far. This research seeks toaddress the question of what factors influence villagers’ tendency towards solar panelacceptance for domestic usage. To answer the question, a survey was conducted amongresidents who had not installed the new technology in the survey time. A model basedon the modified framework of the Technology Acceptance Model for energy transitionwas developed and data was collected from the northern part of Iran—Mazandaranprovince. The data revealed that through the mediating role of attitude, the strongesteffect on adoption intention relates to perceived usefulness. The paper discusses whysolar energy technology is not welcomed in the studied community. The findingscontribute to increase our knowledge about underlying factors on the development ofpublic adoption of renewable energies in a developing country.

Tudeh Party and North Oil Score

The Soviet Union and before that, Russia as one of the most powerful neighbors of Iran in history, despite its abundance of oil resources always looked at Iran's oil resources for specific purposes. In examining the impact of oil on the relations between the two countries of Iran and Russia, it turns out that they were trying to reach the Iranian oil resources in some cases, one in 1299/1921and the other in 1920/1941. At the time of Iran's occupation of the Second World War, the Russians, though at every turn did not succeed in their goals, during the occupation of Iran in September 1941 by the Allies they used all the necessary tools. For example, they used the Tudeh Party, the first and most organized Leftist party in Iran, to achieve its oil targets. At this stage, the Russian Foreign Ministry Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Kavtaradze came to Iran and formally requested for a license to exploit North Oil. The Tudeh Party, while previously opposed to any transfer of privilege to foreigners, when the Soviet Union- their spiritual and co-professional supporters came out, by providing the Balance Scheme they granted the southern oil share to the British and the North Sea's privilege to the Soviet Union. Because the American companies were set to exploit the oil scorecard in northern Iran, immediately the Soviet Union entered the scene and the Tudeh party also met with them. This oil demand was rejected by the Iranian parliament and the Iranian government opposed any new privilege because of the prevalence of war conditions in the world. In this context, the efforts of the Tudeh Party to satisfy the Iranian government and parliament in order to agree with the Soviet demand for oil in their own way can be considered.

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate”

The diplomatic relationship between the USA and Iran has long been fraught and is characterised by various conflicts and the implementation of economic sanctions. It can be argued that the relationship became even more hostile after Donald Trump was elected president of the US. Trump’s sentiments towards Iran were made public through his behavior on Twitter, both before and after he took over the Presidency. These sentiments have been a mix of negative and sometimes positive views and opinions. This study uses a corpus of Trump’s tweets that explicitly mention ‘Iran’ as the basis of a linguistic analysis and applies to it the analytical framework of appraisal from Systemic Functional Linguistics. More specifically, this study focuses on how he established an Us vs. Them dichotomy. While the analysis shows that Iran has been generally portrayed negatively by Trump, there were several tweets where the Iranian government was appraised positively, too. More interestingly, in those tweets, he seemed to target Obama and democrats and represent them negatively while Iran was assessed in positive terms.

Khadija Mirza Agasi, an Unrecognized Genius?

В статье анализируются государственные реформы в Иране, предпринятые хаджа Мирза Агаси на посту главы иранского правительства, и роль первого визиря в модернизации страны. Автор приходит к выводу, что большая часть начинаний главы правительства оказалась нереализованной не из-за бездарности предложенных мероприятий, а из-за пассивности иранской элиты и нежелания феодальных кругов Ирана менять устоявшиеся нормы общественно-экономической жизни страны. Усилия первого министра, направленные на укрепление основ иранской государственности, суверенитета и защиты национальных интересов от агрессивных устремлений Российской империи и Великобритании, потребовали от хаджа Мирзы Агаси принятия непростых, а зачастую и непопулярных решений, что сказалось на восприятии его деятельности широкими кругами отечественной и иностранной исторической науки как исключительно вредных для Ирана. Анализ архивных документов показывает, что в условиях крайне стесненных возможностей первый министр оказался способен не только противостоять внешнему давлению, но и пытаться запустить процесс модернизации всего хозяйственного механизма Ирана, что легло в основу последующих реформ середины XIX веке. Широта взглядов, готовность следовать прагматичному курсу, способность отказаться от узко-клановых и узко-религиозных стереотипов во имя процветания страны сделали хаджа Мирзу Агаси видным государственным деятелем Ирана первой половины XIX века, незаслуженно забытого в научных кругах. Автор считает, что потенциалы реформ, предложенных первым визирем, вполне могли вывести Иран из состояния застоя и внешней зависимости от иностранных империй. The article analyzes Iranian reforms undertaken by the khadija Mirza Agasi as the leader of the Iranian government. It also investigates the role the first vizier played in the modernization of the country. The author concludes that the majority of reforms initiated by the leader remained unimplemented not because of their mediocre character but because of the passive nature of Iranian elite and feudal representatives’ desire to hinder social and economic innovations. The efforts of the first minister were aimed at the fortification of Iranian nationhood and sovereignty. The minister tried to thwart Russian and British aggression, he had to take difficult and often unpopular decisions, which explains why Russian and foreign historians believe his actions to be detrimental to Iran. The analysis of archival materials shows that having limited resources the first minster managed to resist external pressure and attempted to renovate the Iranian economy, which served as a basis for the reforms of the mid-19th century. The minister’s broad-mindedness, his readiness to work on pragmatic goals, his ability to discard social and religious stereotypes for the benefit of the country earned Mirza Agasi the fame of a prominent Iranian statesman of the early 19th century. The author of the article believes that the minister, whose achievements are unfairly neglected by historians, could steer Iran out of stagnation and external subordination.

Iran and International Law

Geographically situated in the juxtaposition of East and West, peace among nations is the zeal of Iranian people. As a founding member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, Iran was seen as a great supporter of multilateralism. Iran voted in favor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and hosted the first UN Human Rights Conference in its capital in 1968. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the crisis of the US diplomatic and consular staff in Tehran, the United States put in place embargoes against the newly elected Iranian government and instituted proceedings against Iran before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Iran did not participate in the proceedings to defend itself and the court ruled that Iran has violated its international obligations. Since then, Iran has faced many challenges in its international relations especially with the Western powers. For example, neither Iraq’s aggression against Iran nor the use of chemical weapons against Iranian civilians was recognized by the UN Security Council; different types of unilateral, regional, and international sanctions have been imposed on Iran; and the human rights situation in Iran has been repeatedly criticized by individual Western states and the UN mechanisms. Furthermore, Iran’s nuclear program was considered by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, while the US officials have emphasized that military options against Iran remain “on the table.” Iranian academics and international lawyers have extensively discussed the last four decades of Iran’s presence on the international plane as a thought-provoking issue in the fields of international responsibility, diplomatic and consular law, state immunity, arbitration, judicial adjudication, human rights, humanitarian law, use of force, law of the sea, fight against terrorism, and nonproliferation, just to name a few. This long list, however, has created its own negative impact internally: doubts about the effectiveness and efficacy of relevant rules of international law which found more basis after the United States announced its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed some further tough sanctions against Iran. Seeking to use international law as a tool to protect its national interests, the Iranian government has brought this case to the ICJ and is still making efforts to preserve the nuclear deal. This contribution introduces the different Iranian resources and institutions in the field and also deals with some of the above-mentioned topics as the most important subjects for Iran in the context of international law.

EXPRESS: Cracking the Box or Stretching Its Walls? Exploiting Institutional Plasticity in Iranian Creative Advertising

Through a nine-month ethnography in an advertising agency in Iran, a deeply conservative society, we explore the microprocesses through which actors search for and exploit areas of institutional plasticity toward incremental change. Given the infeasibility of more significant change in a highly institutionalized arrangement, actors in these settings are likely to seek out institutions characterized by the highest degree of plasticity. Yet, extant institutional research has not yet addressed the question of how they may go about doing so, which is what we seek to do in this paper. By studying how celebrity endorsement became more normative in the field of advertising despite initial resistance from Iranian government regulators, we make four contributions to institutional literature. First, we demonstrate how institutional plasticity can serve as an antecedent to incremental institutional change in highly institutionalized contexts. Second, we trace the source of institutional plasticity to a misalignment between institutional pillars. Third, we identify the tactics and strategies that challengers use in the process of sensing institutional plasticity and stretching institutional boundaries. Finally, we shed light on the use of material and discursive resources across different stages of negotiations over incremental movements in the boundaries of normativity within a highly institutionalized setting.

A summary of the main actions of the Iranian government during the Covid-19: From March 5 until December 20, 2020

The article's abstract is not available.

An assessment of trends in the Iranian pharmaceutical market following domestic production of selected medications (2007‒2017) and new considerations for health policymakers

Background: Enacting national policies which empower the local production of medications is a promising way to improve the accessibility and affordability of medications, but this can also have unintended consequences. A number of such policies have been adopted by the Iranian government. This study was designed to examine the changes in the consumption of a number of selected pharmaceuticals which occurred in the years after these selected products began to be domestically produced. The implications of these changes were then evaluated for their potential to suggest possible policy changes. Method: A 10-year trend study was conducted to identify changes which occurred between 2007 and 2017 in the consumption of 28 selected, imported medications after they began to be domestically produced. Results: Six different medication consumption patterns were observed after the development of domestic medication production. In addition, a downward trend in the cost of medications was observed, specifically due to the introduction of domestic pharmaceuticals. Discussion: Examination of the observed changes in the consumption patterns revealed that various factors affect consumption patterns of imported medications. Significant increases in certain domestically manufactured medications indicated that local production might result in the irrational use of medications. In addition, the competitiveness of Iranian products, in terms of quality and accessibility should be considered. Conclusion: New considerations are needed for health policymakers to support domestic production of viable alternative medications. However, increased accessibility of domestically produced medications may result in greater unreasonable use of medications

Analysis of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions Impacts on COVID-19 Pandemic in Iran

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on people's health, and countries' infrastructures around the globe. Iran was one of the first countries that experienced the vast prevalence of the coronavirus outbreak. Iranian government applied various nonpharmaceutical interventions to eradicate the epidemic in different periods. To evaluate the effectiveness of applied policies, the number of cases and death before and after the interventions studied and the effective reproduction number of the infection was analyzed under various scenarios. The SEIR generic model was applied to capture the dynamic of the pandemic in Iran. It is assumed that changes in reproduction number are responses to interventions. Depending on how responsive people to the government interventions, the effectiveness of each intervention has been investigated. Based on the model results, the peak of the total number of infected individuals will occur around the end of May and the start of June 2021. It is revealed that the outbreak had been able to be smoothed if the government had continued the full lockdown and strict quarantine. The result will allow for the assessment of the effects of different government interventions in new outbreaks.