ABSTRACT
The study of Iraqi politics has revealed a significant dualism between an indigenous tradition of political behaviour and an extraneous tradition implicit in the state framework within which politics are conducted. The use of force to eliminate any significant opposition based on alternative views about the proper ends of politics, or on competing collective loyalties, has been a characteristic feature of Iraqi politics. Iran sought to show the Gulf states that its relations with Syria demonstrated a new-found pragmatism. The Iranian revolutionaries refused to accept the premises of their predecessor regime that the nation needed a military able to deter external enemies and defend its frontiers. Islamic Iran’s assumption that the world could be re-invented, history undone or reversed, and the bygone era of an ‘Islamic community’ reconstituted anew, complete with a new Islamic man, and an Islamic way of warfare.
