Bandwagon for profit : Egyptian foreign policy toward Iran
Abstract
What explains the lack of normalized relations between Egypt and Iran? Despite mutual potential
benefits Egypt and Iran could have gained from normalized bilateral relations over the past several
decades, a range of factors prevented them from doing so, including personality politics, domestic
political and economic considerations, as well as regional and external alliances and competing
visions of regional order. Accordingly, the trajectory of modern Egyptian policy toward Iran has
been non-linear. Realist and constructivist schools of International Relations theory, on their own,
cannot adequately explain how Egypt's foreign policy toward Iran varied from times of hostility,
friendship, stagnation, and openness under Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni
Mubarak, and Muhammad Morsi. As such, neoclassical realism--with its emphasis on the
interaction between geopolitical structural conditions and the roles of leadership and domestic
politics in shaping a state's foreign policy--offers the best framework for analyzing Egypt's foreign
policy behavior toward Iran.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.