Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture

24 An Iranian Worldview The Strategic Culture of the Islamic Republic¹

Ali Parchami

DOI: 10.4324/9781003010302-27

Introduction

For the past four decades, the main exponent of the Iranian worldview has been the governing regime of the Islamic Republic. It has weathered significant external and domestic challenges to this point but has also been the architect of its own most critical weaknesses. Dominated by a clerical hierarchy that draws on Shia Islamic conventions and Iranian national identity, it is a hybrid subculture with its own distinctive outlook, values, and norms. Built around its founding father’s velayat-e-faqih doctrine, domestically it espouses conservatism through the Islamification of every facet of life.² Internationally, ...