92 Middle east Policy, Vol. XXi, No. 4, WiNter 2014 Iran under rouhanI: StIll alone In the World Thomas Juneau Dr. Juneau is an assistant professor with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Squandered Opportunity: Neoclassical Realism and Iranian Foreign Policy (Stanford University Press, forthcoming). Until July 2014, he was a strategic analyst with the Department of National Defence, Government of Canada. © 2014, The Author Middle East Policy © 2014, Middle East Policy Council I ran is alone in the world. Its acute strategic loneliness is primarily the re- sult of structural factors inherent in its place in the regional and international systems and is largely independent of the actions of whoever governs the country. Its international posture does not render co- operation with other states impossible, nor does it predetermine a condition of perma- nent conlict with its neighbors. Strategic loneliness, however, explains why Iran has very limited common interests with its neighbors and why cooperation is dificult and costly to achieve. Tehran’s policies, as a result, can worsen or improve the situa- tion but cannot fundamentally change it. Analyzing a state’s international posture or position in the international system is a necessary irst step that should form the foundation of foreign-policy analysis. After briely explaining what strategic loneliness implies, this article therefore will lay out the essential features of Iran’s place in the regional and interna- tional balances of power, which explain the persistence of its strategic loneliness. It then looks into how this posture shapes the parameters of Iran’s most important bilateral relations. Next, the article argues that efforts launched in 2013 by President Hassan Rouhani to solve the nuclear stand- off between Iran, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies and partners, on the other, are unlikely to alter more than marginally the Islamic Republic’s posture. Even if Tehran and the international com- munity reach a long-term solution, Iran’s loneliness will endure. THE MEANING OF STRATEGIC LONELINESS 1 Whatever coniguration the regional balances of power and interests take — Iran’s power relative to its neighbors, the presence of extraregional powers, the speciic nature of the regimes in Tehran and in neighboring capitals — Iran’s strategic loneliness deprives it of space to make gains from cooperation. Cooperation obviously does not come easily for any state in the anarchic international system. But for Iran, the structure of the regional balance makes it excessively dificult and costly to engage in sustained cooperation and to overcome its neighbors’ inherently high levels of mistrust and suspicion. Such an acute strategic loneliness explains both continuities and ongoing challenges in