www.ccsenet.org/jpl Journal of Politics and Law Vol. 4, No. 1; March 2011 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 231 The US Geopolitical Codes and Its Influences on the US-Iran Relations: The Case of George W. Bush’s Presidency Saeid Naji (Ph.D. candidate) Dept. of Government and civilization studies Faculty of Human Ecology, Putra University, Malaysia Jayum Anak Jawan (Prof. Dr) Dept. of Government and civilization studies Faculty of Human Ecology, Putra University, Malaysia Abstract This paper attempts to explain the US-Iran political relations from the geopolitical perspective. It focuses on George W. Bush’s presidency as a remarkable period in two states’ relations. Concentrating on the US geopolitical codes, this work aims to study the political leaders’ beliefs and also the influences of these ideas on the states’ foreign policy. The research also stresses on some of the world’s geopolitical changes in the geopolitical world order context. With the end of Iran-Iraq war, inimical relation of the US-Iran was promoting, and it even entered a more critical phase with the occurrence of changes in the US foreign policy towards Iran, when Bush was elected as the US president in 2001 and especially after September 11 th attacks. At this point, Iran was introduced as an “axis of evil” and this asseveration strengthened hostility between the two countries. With the election of Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president in 2005, Iran’s political behavior also underwent drastic changes. As a result, both countries, based on their leaders’ beliefs, pursued their policies in the regional and global level to access to different objectives, in line with the ideas that had been derived from their geopolitical-ideological assumptions. Keywords: Geopolitical codes, leaders’ beliefs, Foreign policy, Iran-US relations 1. Introduction The geopolitical codes have always had a remarkable role in the formation of foreign policy. Such codes have been defined as geographical-political assumptions about interests of any country in the world, potential threats to these interests, suitable responses to these threats and justification for those responses as well (Gaddis, 1982; Taylor & Flint, 2000). Explaining the US geopolitical code, Dijkink (1998) believes that it is “a map with countries painted in different colours according to their degree of hostility/friendship vis-à-vis the US” (p. 293). These assumptions in fact are formed “either before or just after an administration takes office” (Gaddis, 1982, p. ix). Moreover, it emphasizes on the importance of the leaders’ beliefs and its impact on the states’ actions in every specific presidential term and for this reason they have been called “intellectual capital” and “operational codes”(George, 1969; Kissinger, 1979). Although such codes are usually defined for specific presidency term, they almost are not changed fundamentally and are relatively constant and basically their changing is done gradually within limits of a long historical period which is called geopolitical world order (Kolossov, 2003). Existence of a strong relation between geopolitical codes and geopolitical world orders has been mentioned by Taylor(1993). He explicitly mentions in his work; ‘Geopolitical World Orders’ that such codes are the building blocks of geopolitical world orders. It will be understood when we pay attention to geographical scale of codes, also matching the different levels of such codes to each other and creating a relatively stable global pattern all over the world as a geopolitical order. In addition, in the definition of geopolitical codes, there is an emphasis on a set of political – geographical assumptions which are foundation of foreign policy. From this point of view, geopolitical codes are thus, the political geography assumptions behind the foreign policy decisions of states (Flint & Taylor, 2007). Furthermore, these codes are the geographical frameworks which a government utilizes to deal with outside world. In this regard, “a national interest is defined and other states are evaluated in terms of whether they are real or potential aids or obstacles to that interest”(Taylor, 1993, p. 36). On the other hand, in order to define the geopolitical codes the geographical distance or “geographical scale” should be also recognized (Taylor, 1993); because it refers to the ability and power of every country as global power, regional power or even as a state. Here, geopolitical codes are formed of three different levels: First; the local codes which are defined for all countries and cover the state’s immediate neighbours as either friends or enemies; Second; the regional powers that “define their national interests beyond the narrow confines of their borders”(Taylor, 1993, p. 37) and are called as regional codes; The third section