Editing Foreign relations of Iran (section)

==Revolutionary period under Khomeini==
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Under Khomeini's government, Iran's foreign policy often emphasized the elimination of foreign influence and the spread of Islamic revolution over state-to-state relations or the furtherance of trade. In Khomeini's own words:

<blockquote>We shall [[export of revolution|export our revolution]] to the whole world. Until the cry [[Shahada|"There is no God but Allah"]] resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.<ref>[11 February 1979 (according to Dilip Hiro in ''The Longest War'' p.32) p.108 from ''Excerpts from Speeches and Messages of Imam Khomeini on the Unity of the Muslims''.</ref></blockquote>

The Islamic Republic's effort to spread the revolution is considered to have begun in earnest in March 1982, when 380 men from more than 25 Arab and Islamic nations met at the former Tehran Hilton Hotel for a "seminar" on the "ideal Islamic government" and, less academically, the launch of a large-scale offensive to cleanse the Islamic world of the satanic Western and Communist influences that were seen to be hindering the Islamic world's progress. The gathering of militants, primarily Shi'a but including some [[Sunni]]s, "with various religious and revolutionary credentials", was hosted by the Association of Militant Clerics and the Pasdaran Islamic Revolutionary Guards.<ref>Wright, Robin, ''Sacred Rage'' (2001), p.28</ref> The nerve centre of the revolutionary crusade, operational since shortly after the 1979 revolution, was located in downtown Tehran and known to outsiders as the "Taleghani Centre". Here the groundwork for the gathering was prepared: the establishment of Arab cadres, recruited or imported from surrounding countries to spread the revolution, and provision of headquarters for such groups as the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain, the Iraqi Shi'a movement, and Philippine Moro, Kuwaiti, Saudi, North African and Lebanese militant clerics.

These groups came under the umbrella of the "Council for the Islamic Revolution", which was supervised by Ayatollah [[Hussein Ali Montazeri]], the designated heir of Ayatollah Khomeini. Most of the council's members were clerics, but they also reportedly included advisors from the Syrian and Libyan intelligence agencies. The council apparently received more than $1&nbsp;billion annually in contributions from the faithful in other countries and in funds allocated by the Iranian government.<ref>Wright, Robin, ''Sacred Rage'', (2001), p. 33</ref>

Its strategy was two-pronged: armed struggle against what were perceived as Western imperialism and its agents; and an internal purifying process to free Islamic territory and Muslim minds of non-Islamic cultural, intellectual and spiritual influences, by providing justice, services, resources to the ''mustazafin'' (weak) masses of the Muslim world. These attempts to spread its Islamic revolution strained the country's relations with many of its Arab neighbours, and the extrajudicial execution of Iranian dissidents in Europe unnerved European nations, particularly France and Germany. For example, the Islamic Republic expressed its opinion of Egypt's secular government by naming a street in Tehran after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's killer, Khalid al-Istanbuli.<ref>Nasr, Vali, ''The Shia Revival'', Norton, (2006), p. 143</ref> At this time Iran found itself very isolated, but this was a secondary consideration to the spread of revolutionary ideals across the [[Persian Gulf]] and confrontation with the US (or "Great Satan") in the 1979-1981 [[Iran hostage crisis|hostage crisis]].

===Revolutionary influence and regional interventions===
Arab and other Muslim volunteers who came to Iran were trained in camps run by the Revolutionary Guards. There were three primary bases in Tehran, and others in [[Ahvaz]], [[Isfahan]], [[Qom]], [[Shiraz]], and [[Mashhad]], and a further facility, converted in 1984, near the southern naval base at Bushire.<ref>Wright, Robin, ''Sacred Rage'', (2001), pp. 34-5</ref>

In 1981 Iran supported an [[1981 Bahraini coup d'état attempt|attempt]] to overthrow the [[Bahrain]]i government, in 1983 expressed political support for Shi'ites who bombed Western embassies in [[Kuwait]], and in 1987 Iranian pilgrims rioted at poor living conditions and treatment during the [[Hajj]] (pilgrimage) in [[Mecca]], Saudi Arabia, and were consequently massacred. Nations with strong fundamentalist movements, such as [[Egypt]] and [[Algeria]], also began to mistrust Iran. With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iran was thought to be supporting the creation of the [[Hizballah]] organization. Furthermore, Iran went on to oppose the Arab–Israeli peace process, because it saw Israel as an illegal country.

===Iran–Iraq War===
{{See also|Iran–Iraq relations| Iran–Iraq War}}
Iranian relations with [[Iraq]] have never been good. They took a turn for the worse in 1980 when Iraq invaded Iran. The stated reason for Iraq's invasion was the contested sovereignty over the [[Shatt al-Arab]] waterway (''Arvand Rud'' in Persian). Other unstated reasons were probably more significant: Iran and Iraq had a history of interference in each other's affairs by supporting separatist movements, although this interference had ceased since the [[Algiers Agreement (1975)|Algiers Agreement]].

Iran demanded the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Iranian territory and the return to the ''status quo ante'' for the Shatt al-Arab, as established under the Algiers Agreement. This period saw Iran become even more isolated, with virtually no allies. Exhausted by the war, Iran signed [[United Nations Security Council Resolution 598|UN Security Council Resolution 598]] in July 1988, after the United States and Germany began supplying [[Iraq]] with [[chemical weapon]]s. The ceasefire resulting from the UN resolution was implemented on 20 August 1988. Neither nation had made any real gains in the war, which left one million dead and had a dramatic effect on the country's foreign policy. From this point on, the Islamic Republic recognized that it had no choice but to moderate its radical approach and rationalize its objectives. This was the beginning of what Anoushiravan Ehteshami calls the "reorientation phase" of Iranian foreign policy.

===Pragmatism===
Like other revolutionary states, practical considerations have sometimes led the Islamic Republic to inconsistency and subordination of such ideological concerns as pan-Islamic solidarity. One observer, Graham Fuller, has called the Islamic Republic "stunningly silent"
<blockquote>about [Muslim] [[First Chechen War|Chechens]] in [non-Muslim] [[Russia]], or [[East Turkestan independence movement|Uyghurs]] in China,<ref>See [http://www.uhrp.org/ Uyghurs Human Rights Project] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070914044544/http://www.uhrp.org/ |date=14 September 2007}}</ref> simply because the Iranian state has important strategic ties with both China and Russia that need to be preserved in the state interest. Iran has astonishingly even supported Christian [[Armenia]] in the [[First Nagorno-Karabakh War]] against Shi'ite [[Azerbaijan]] and has been careful not to lend too much support to Islamic Tajiks in [[Tajikistan]], where the language is basically a dialect of Persian.</blockquote> In this regard the Islamic Republic resembles another revolutionary state, the old [[Soviet Union]]. The USSR was ideologically committed not to Islam but to world [[proletarian revolution]], led by Communist parties under its leadership, but "frequently abandoned support to foreign communist parties when it served Soviet national interests to cooperate with the governments that were oppressing them."<ref>Fuller, Graham E., ''The Future of Political Islam'', Palgrave MacMillan (2003), p. 41</ref>