Week 4 Blog

Hello again interested readers. This week of research has seen me continue to categorically examine the relationship between the U.S. and Iran during specific presidencies, and I have also been working on researching papers similar to mine to get an idea for the correct way to present and interpret my results. I have begun to record and table my relevant results, and I will also be continuing this process until I have completed my research with the Obama administration, hopefully completing the results section of my paper. With these goals in mind, I have conducted an intensive week of work and research.

I began the week by resuming my research with the Congressional Research Service (CRS), and by actively observing Iran-U.S. relations during the time of the Bush senior administration. The first factor that immediately became apparent when I began my research with Bush was that the hostage-taking that had previously pestered Carter had made a return and was a present issue for the administration. While Iran did not get directly involved, according to a source entitled “The George H.W. Bush Administration,” Iranian allies in Lebanon continued a hostage situation for a significant period of the term. The relations during this first and only term were marked by a clear presence of frustration and rockiness due to persisting issues like this hostage-taking and more.

Another major shock to Iran-U.S. relations during this period was that Iraq had begun a very serious and coordinated invasion of Kuwait for its oil resources and wealth. Iraq’s invasion placed a very serious threat to Iranian interests and made the nation feel extremely pressured by this new military presence, eventually leading to U.S. involvement in the ending of Iraq’s occupation. A source called “The Crimes of Saddam Hussein” focused on how the implication of the Iraqi invasion provided the U.S. and Iran with grounds for peaceful, cooperative relations, and the source explains that Bush’s term in office was actually a period of relative compromise and collaboration for the two nations, at least until the end of the Iraqi occupation.

After finishing my work with the Bush senior administration, I began my research for the results section of my paper, trying to find papers that were similar to my own in terms of subject matter and organization. The first paper that I ended up examining was one that I have had since my lit review, a source titled “The Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear Threats From 1970 to 2010,” where the author examines and records data on nuclear threats that were spoken or indicated publicly. I realized that for my own results section, I could tabulate the information I found on each president separately and then I could simply compare the results for information on the most effective strategy or diplomatic action for dealing with Iran.

This week has seen me both continue my previous work with the CRS and U.S. presidents and has seen me introduce new work with my examination of other results sections.

Regards,
Lazar Vukcevic

Week 3 Blog

Hello again fans and interested readers. This week has seen me continue my same previous focus on examining U.S. presidencies in chronological order, focusing on the two terms of the Regan administration for my analysis. Also, I have begun to examine the ways in which I can analyze and ultimately organize the results that I obtain from my research, looking at how the results that I acquire from each of my sources can be more generally applied to the duration of a presidency and how trends in Iran-U.S. relations can be tracked. With all of these goals in mind, it has been a busy week of researching and examination.

My first step this week was to begin to search the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for sources that detailed the major foreign policy decisions and Iranian policies of the Reagan administration. The first realization that I came to was that there was an immediate shift in Iran-U.S. relations when Reagan took office. One example of this shift was that the Iranian hostage crisis came to a swift end when Reagan was inaugurated. This end has been associated with Reagan’s campaign promises of a stern stance against Iranian aggression and hostage-taking, and his promise to take immediate action if the hostages were not released by the time of his inauguration.

From this example I began compiling sources that focused on Reagan’s first term in office. One source that I found on the CRS was titled “The Reagan Administration and Iran,” and this source placed a majority of its focus on how the Reagan era had some of the most direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. This confrontation was the direct result of a number of factors, including the pursuit of cold war interests, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. With the many conflicting foreign policy interests during his first term in office, it was no wonder that U.S.-Iran relations grew to be strained significantly.

My next step was to look specifically towards Reagan’s second term in office, and I quickly realized that this period of time was overshadowed by one major issue: the Iran-Contra affair. Examining a source from the CRS entitled “The Iran-Contra Affair,” it quickly became clear that Reagan’s actions in the affair were in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism to states in South America. This presented another shift in the Reagan administration’s stance with Iran, from stern to almost apathetic, willing to provide the Iranians with weapons to support other geo-political causes.  

From my week of work I believe I have gathered the larger political trends and stances of the Reagan administration on Iran. It is clear that there were a number of shifts in the administration’s stances on Iran, and that other global issues, such as the spread of communism and fighting the cold war, also greatly limited how much effort and funding Reagan could put towards specifically dealing with Iran. I plan to look at the state of Iran-U.S. relations under George H.W. Bush for my next week of work.

Regards,

Lazar Vukcevic

Week 2 Blog

Hello once again interested readers. As of this week I have placed the focus of my work on selecting the sources that I will be using to establish the relationship between the U.S. and Iran during the various presidencies from 1979 to the present. The source that I previously employed in my paper on Iran titled “Iran, Gulf Security, and U.S. Policy” was crucial in helping me to chronologically order the evolution of Iran since the revolution, and the source also served as a baseline for me to understand which presidencies I should be aware of off the bat.
I first began my work by going to the Congressional Research Service website and using the search function to look up any documents written about the presidencies I was concerned with. I began with looking for sources about the latter portion of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and then eliminating sources that did not examine policies and relations during the time period. The first source that I found to be of relevance to my paper was one titled “A "hollow army" reappraised: President Carter, defense budgets, and the politics of military readiness.” This source focused most significantly on President Carter’s military and defense policies, indicating how his budget choices and policies affected the future of the U.S. and the countries that it had to face on the global stage. While I was initially unsure on how useful this source would prove to be, it ended up providing both insight into specific military policies that Carter enacted and the global reaction to these policies, including the reaction in areas like the Middle East and specifically Iran.
Iran and the Iranian hostage crisis were not the focus of the source, however, so I then went on to examine a source entitled “The Carter Administration.” While not immediately apparent, this source places its focus on the events and policies preceding, during, and following the Iranian hostage crisis, directly attempting to categorize the causes and reason for the hostage situation. This source looked to have all of the information that I would need for this part of my research, so I quickly began to get into the specific actions and events that it mentioned as major causes of the hostage crisis. Considering the fact that the hostage crisis was a very vitriolic and negative reaction to the U.S. and its policy, I began to categorize the major Carter actions and policies as ineffective or poor at dealing with Iran.
The first major factor that the source cited as catalyzing the crisis was post-revolution Iran’s perception of the U.S. as “heavily or over-involved” in its national affairs. The second factor was Carter’s choice to provide asylum to the previous Shah of Iran for the medical treatments he sought in the U.S. Iranians perceived this as a direct betrayal and believed that the Shah should have been brought back to Iran and tried for war crimes. From this source it was clear that post-revolution Iran was no longer going to tolerate large U.S. involvement in its affairs or any U.S. interference with its national priorities, meaning that policies that did either would likely be inefficient and could even result in hostility with Iran. This week basically consisted of the conclusions that I have made about the Carter administration and I plan to look to the two terms of Ronald Reagan for my next week of work.

Regards,                                                       

Lazar Vukcevic

First Research Blog Post

Hello loyal fan and reader, my name is Lazar Vukcevic and I will be writing in this weekly blog to continuously update you on my progress in researching Iran-U.S. relations and the most effective diplomatic action for decreasing and eventually stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation. While Iran and the U.S. have been at odds for decades, it is clear that there is a way for the U.S. to succeed in stopping Iran’s nuclear proliferation, without having to endanger the lives of either Iranian or U.S. citizens. Considering the recent Iran nuclear deal, Iran-U.S. relations is an issue that has modern importance and a valuable, historical significance. The deal that was last signed between the U.S. and Iran, however, fails to address a number of issues with Iranian nuclear proliferation as it currently stands, and allows for the continued creation and research of nuclear weapons within Iranian facilities. This new deal has entirely failed to provide the necessary stipulations for Iranian nuclear proliferation to stop, and there will need to be quite a bit of revision for it to become an eventual success in Iran. The academic conversation is fairly divided and scholars in the field have proposed thousands of solutions and diplomatic actions to resolve the poor state of Iran-U.S. relations. However, no agreed upon resolution has yet to be created, leaving the political world with the time-sensitive question of what diplomacy would work best for convincing Iran to halt and eventually stop its nuclear program entirely. The issue being examined is extremely polarizing in nature, and even many of the scholars researching diplomatic solutions struggle to find a perfect way to counteract their own inherent biases. I plan to keep this paper and the research based in statistics and numerical data on relations, such as trade statistics, sanctions, and other clear pieces of evidence that display a nation’s view of another nation. The basic plan for determining which policy is most effective is to examine the diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. from the end of the Iranian revolution (1979) to the present day. While I will be unable to examine every policy and diplomatic action made during this period, I will get a general understanding for the U.S.'s stance towards Iran during each presidency from 1979 to the present and will use that understanding to determine which policy was most effective at achieving its desired effect. The administrations that have the most success with Iran (at least on paper) will then be more closely examined to determine which specific policies caused their success. Even though this method does not allow for the employment of a new type of diplomatic choice or action, it does ensure that historically effective methods of dealing with Iran can be brought back into the policy of the present. With a little hard work and tenacity, I hope that you and I can both enjoy the moment that I can present my findings to the world and at least guide the academic conversation towards a proven and effective policy for Iran.