Historic and Contemporary European-Iranian Relations

This book is about relations between Iran and Mediterranean Europe as cradles of two of the world’s most ancient civilizations, and it presents a prodigious and illuminating discussion of those ancient-world issues in the context of today’s geopolitics. Building on this ancient-world civilizational clash of Empires, it offers an overview of the link and significant political equations between the Mediterranean and Middle East regions in the past four decades— a field which has remained understudied in academic circles. This book also provides a full description of relations between Iran and Southern Europe after the 1979 Iranian revolution and investigates how these relations have affected both domestic and international politics. The book addresses in some depth, developments on Iran’s nuclear issues and Greece’s post-crash financial crisis, and how the two countries collaborated to deal with difficulties and hardships, including sanctions and oil tanker crisis. The author provides a first-hand description and analysis of developments after the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) under the Trump administration in 2018. It also provides important insights into the influence of external players and alliance-building in the Mediterranean and the impact on Iran’s relations with the wider world, and geopolitics of the Middle East after the normalization of ties between Israel and several Arab states under the Abraham Accords. It also provides important insights into the influence of external players in the Mediterranean and the impact on Iran’s relations with the wider world, and geopolitics of the Middle East after the normalization of ties between Israel and several Arab states under the Abraham Accords. This unusual and important perspective will be vital reading for researchers and students of politics, international relations and conflict.