Discursive Foundations of Iran's Nuclear Policy

During the last few years, Iran's nuclear policy has become one of the most important issues in international relations. Some aspects of this policy have been more or less constant, while others have changed dramatically. 'Rationalist' explanations cannot provide a fully consistent account of Iran's nuclear policy. This article attempts to explain the policy and its continuities and changes on the basis of a discursive approach, in which the constitutive effects of domestic meaning structures on the state's identity, and hence its preferences, are more emphasized. The main argument is that three discourses that contributed to the constitution of the identity of the 1978–79 revolutionary movement and later the identity of the Islamic Republic have made Iran's nuclear policy possible. Discourses of independence and justice give meaning to Iran's persistence in following its nuclear program, and a discourse of resistance can explain its recent less flexible and more confrontationist policies.