1 Iran’s Foreign Relations under President Raisi Mehran Kamrava Georgetown University Qatar, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies T he election of Ebrahim Raisi to the presidency in Iran in 2021 was not expected to foster major changes in the county’s international relations. Paradoxically, however, the Raisi administration has brought about important changes to Iranian foreign policy and international relations in some unexpected areas. Whereas President Raisi has sought to improve Iran’s relations with the country’s immediate neighbors, negotiations with the United States and European Union over the Iranian nuclear program continue to remain stalled. The articles in this special issue explore Iran’s foreign relations with a number of key international actors during the Raisi presidency so far. The issue starts with an examination of the challenges and opportunities in US-Iranian relations. Gawdat Bahgat focuses specifically on root causes of the tensions that have per- sistently characterized relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic. There have been brief periods in which hostilities between the two states have been temporar- ily lowered, as was the case in the final year of the Obama administration, when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the nuclear deal, was signed in 2015. After the 2020 presidential elections in the United States, expectations that tensions between Iran and the United States may be lowered were dashed by the Biden administration’s wait-and-see attitude toward developments in Tehran. Although the rhetoric and messaging coming out of Washington differed as compared to that of the Trump White House, the substance of US foreign policy toward Iran did not change significantly with the new administration. In fact, the Biden administration has continued to point to Tehran as a major destabilizing force in the Persian Gulf and in the rest of the Middle East. Tehran, for its part, has also hardly softened its attitude toward the United States. Largely to compensate for its tense relations with the United States and Europe, the Raisi administration has deepened Iran’s “Look East” policy started by its predecessor. Javad Heiran-Nia and Mahmood Monshipouri focus on one specific aspect of this policy, namely Iran’s fraught foreign policy toward the South Caucasus. In specific relation to the South Caucasus, Heiran-Nia and Monshipouri argue, Iran’s ability to further its strategic objectives toward the region are actually hampered by one of the central pillars of its Look East policy, namely its close alliance with Russia, especially as represented in the 20-year strategic agree- ment between the two countries. Nowhere were these difficulties made more apparent than in Iran’s relations with the Republic of Azerbaijan, especially during and following the second Karabakh war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. As Rovshan Mammadli demonstrates in his contribution, © 2023 Hartford Seminary. DOI: 10.1111/muwo.12457 14781913, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/muwo.12457 by Georgetown University Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library, Wiley Online Library on [27/02/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License