ABSTRACT
In the case of Iran, this chapter argues that changes in the Islamic Republic's domestic political field during the early 1990s and 2000s had important ramifications for the general level of political affinity between Tehran and Moscow. Following a tradition of scholarship, the argument can be made that the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as a general dissatisfaction with the dire post-revolutionary conditions of the 1980s and a host of constitutional amendments in 1989, had led to the emergence and institutionalization of an increasingly factionalized one-party system which, during the 1990s, attempted to steer the Islamic Republic away from purely revolutionary principles of isolation and non-alignment in favor of a foreign policy strategy of integration and increasing international cooperation (Rakel, 2009, 2007). Although Moscow would not be the only beneficiary of this renewed interest in international reorientation, this study suggests that these developments have been important to bilateral cooperation insofar as pragmatists and reformists increased ties with Moscow as part of a larger strategic effort to boost both development and diplomacy. Yet by the late 1990s, the progressive policies of these reform-based factions were beginning to fuel the emergence of a counter-reform movement among the nation's religious conservatives and revolutionary hardliners (a.k.a. neo-conservatives) which sought to stem the rising tide of liberal ideology in both domestic and foreign affairs.
