Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract This article studies the role of legislature branch in creating security and recounting the causes and roots of inefficiency of parliaments in performing their securing functions and recognizes the necessary conditions for parliament to govern national security and how to achieve these conditions. In this regard, the role of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in good security governance in Iran will also be discussed. Parliaments need institutions such as free, fair and frequent elections, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, independent organizations, and integrated citizenship to consolidate national security. Economic progress, the absence of a wide gap in economic and social inequalities, the existence of democratic cultural foundations (such as tolerance of dissent, consensus on the democratic method, etc.), non-preference of individual, ethnic and group interests over national interests and lack of foreign intervention are some tools for the continuity and proper functioning of parliament in order to strengthen national security. Until the aforementioned conditions and equipment are provided, no parliament, including the Islamic Consultative Assembly, will be able to perform its functions optimally in order to increase the national security coefficient.

Abstract The Islamic Republic of Iran has gone through several security periods. Enjoying the methodology of “discourse analysis”, this paper discusses the component and impacts of discourses which were prevailing, in Iran, during President Ahmadinejad’s era.   Therefore, the main hypotheses of the paper is: the prevailing discourse of President Ahmadineja’s administration was to return to a revolutionary contraction and expansion that was realized by new elements in a different context and amongst the Islamic and the Revolutionary values, the idea of “Islamic Justice” was highlighted more than others. Thus, the paper concludes that although President Ahmadinejad’s administrations have been successful in achieving peaceful nuclear technology, expansion of relations with some Latin American countries, however, it ended up with new problems like referring the Iran nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, expansion of international sanctions and consensus against the Islamic Republic of Iran.