Soft Power and Deterrence: A Case Study on the I.R. of Iran's Missile Power

Alipoor, Javad; Mirzajani, Mohammad

Soft Power and Deterrence: A Case Study on the I.R. of Iran's Missile Power

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Javad Alipoor ¹

mohammad Mirzajani ²

¹ Assistant Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Iran

² The University of Tabriz

Abstract

In the confrontation between Iran and the US, preventing the development of Iran's military, political and economic power is one of the important challenges of American foreign policy. One of the controversial topics of this confrontation is the deterrence of Iran's missile power against the US; what capabilities does missile power have for Iran's security and national interests in the international arena? Therefore, in the framework of the theory of realism and emphasizing the concept of “soft power” by Joseph Nye and using the qualitative analysis of documents and texts, i.e. documentary method, this article tries to answer the questions why Iran has chosen missile power in order to increase its soft power and make deterrence and does missile power have the ability to strengthen Iran's soft power and create deterrence against the United States of America? The findings of studying the actual examples of the confrontation between Iran and the United States show that despite the superiority of the United States in terms of military, Iran has been able to create an asymmetric balance against it by the expansion of its missile power, which has led to increasing deterrence and international bargaining as two components of soft power.

Keywords

missile power"

bargaining"

asymmetric war"

realism"

Iran"

the United States of America"