Exporting Iran's Islamic Revolution: Steering a Path Between Pan-Islam and Nationalism

This article focuses on the question of whether Iran's foreign policy over the period 1979-94 was a pure reflection of the clerical regime's millenarian crusade and its stated doctrine of exporting the Islamic revolution worldwide. Taking, inter alia, the controversy surrounding Iran's takeover of the island of Abu Musa in 1992, the article argues that Iran's actions were determined by a persistent sense of nationalism which was not less potent than its pan-Islamic vision. Iran's nationalist tradition has been able to survive as a major force in Iranian political culture, its sometimes 'Islamicized' form notwithstanding.