Look to the East Strategy in Iran's Foreign Policy; Strategic components and future developments

An effective foreign policy strategy is realized by using tools such as promoting economic diplomacy, developing cultural diplomacy and common civilizational and cultural communications, creating a balance of power in the international system, strengthening defense-military diplomacy, public diplomacy and digital diplomacy. In recent years, Iran's efforts to de-escalate tensions with Western powers and resolve the ambiguities of these countries regarding the nuclear program and other areas of tension such as regional activities, human rights disputes, and conventional weapons programs have not been successful. And as a result, the pressure caused by the sanctions on Iran's economy is still there. On the other hand, the developments of the international system during the last few decades, some of which have had a direct impact on Iran, have made the look-to-the-east policy more prominent and raised many questions in the context of the reasoning logic of this strategy, its strategic components, and its place in Iran's foreign policy. The important questions of this research include what is the look-to-the-east strategy in Iran's foreign policy, the strategic components and the future of this strategy in the 10-year horizon, which will be answered by using the concept of neo-regionalism as well as the strategic foreign policy model at two levels of governmental and international analysis. The basic hypothesis of the current research is that the look-to-the-east strategy is more than a choice of approach for Iran, it is a strategic requirement to confront the multilateral economic, political, military and security pressures.