The Middle East has seen increases in sectarian violence in the last decades. Critics of Iran accuse the country of having a Shi'a sectarian agenda and of stoking tensions. The academic mainstream...Show moreThe Middle East has seen increases in sectarian violence in the last decades. Critics of Iran accuse the country of having a Shi'a sectarian agenda and of stoking tensions. The academic mainstream literature on the topic is occupied with the puzzle of "How ideological/rational is Iran?" which leads to problems of ambiguity by assuming a unitary foreign policy on a dichotomous spectrum. This thesis critically assesses the Iranian foreign policy puzzle concerning sectarian ideology and reformulates its research question to "How does sectarianism factor into Iranian foreign policy?" and argues that domestic factional structures, translated through institutions, lead to sectarian features of the state's leading ideology, namely Khomeinism, being factored into the country's foreign policy decision making. A new factional analytical framework centred around interpretations of Khomeinist doctrine is developed and applied to events which are said to have led to increased sectarianism on a regional level.Show less
