Document Type : Research/Original/Regular Article
Author
Associated Professor of Political Geography, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran
Abstract
One of the approaches in critical geopolitics involves the differential meaning-making of geopolitical phenomena by individuals, political parties, and states, grounded in their respective identity-based and discursive origins. Within this framework, the year 1980 ushered in a significant intensification of military hostilities along the Iran–Iraq border, culminating in the onset of an all-out war between the two countries. At this historical juncture, the geopolitical reading of the crisis most notably the construction of meaning surrounding the concept of Iran’s territorial integrity and the underlying justifications for its defense against the Ba‘athist Iraq’s aggression evolved into a profound ideological contestation among three competing discourses within Iran: liberal nationalism, Marxist leftism, and the Islamic Revolution. This study seeks to examine the concept of Iran’s territoriality through the lens of the Islamic Revolution’s discourse, employing an interpretive methodology within the framework of constructivist theory. Research findings reveal that, within the discursive framework of the Islamic Revolution The construction of meaning regarding Iran’s territoriality during the war with Iraq was prioritized on the basis of a religious genealogy, primarily through analogies with the wars of the Prophet of Islam and the Shi‘a Imams in the early Islamic era. Accordingly, Iran’s territorial borders were explicitly construed as the locus of the resurrection of authentic Islam and conceptualization of Iran’s territoriality within the nation-state framework did not achieve epistemic centrality. through the Islamically revolutionary discourse’s anti-Western orientation, the geopolitical rationale for defending Iran’s territorial integrity was framed within the dichotomy between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Kufr.
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