This course aims to help students understand the internal dynamics of Iran’s social, economic and political settings, as well as, the interaction between these settings and its foreign policy. Most of Iran’s foreign policy concerns its relations with the US and Israel and revolves around the issue whether Iran should be a nuclear power. So, these topics will constitute most of the foreign politics part of the course. Among the other issues discussed in class are: the rise of religious politics and the consolidation of clerical rule, the nature and interaction between Iranian state institutions, civil-military relations, the Iranian economy, the domestic opposition and the prospects for democracy, the crisis in US-Iran relations, Iran’s relations with the West and neighboring countries, and Iranian society and the role of women in it.