Iran's Diplomacy During Hatami's Presidency

Since 1979 the Islamic Revolution, Iran's foreign policy has experienced Khomeini era,which is "No East, no West, as long as the Islamic" radical diplomatic policy and Khomenei - Rafsanjani period, which is the pragmatic diplomatic policy and Khatami era of pacifist diplomacy. It is a process of transformation. This process reflects the changes of Iran society, politics, economy, as well as facing regional and international situation since the Islamic revolution, Islamic Republic of Iran has to adjust its diplomatic policy to respond to the challenges and realities.This paper takes president Khatami period of Iran as a case to study Iranian diplomacy and discusses that when president Khatami faced Iran's poor domestic economic, political and security environment,he implemented an active foreign policy with new diplomatic vision of "dialogue among civilizations", which opened up the new situation in Iran diplomacy. Under the guidance of the diplomatic thinking of dialogue among civilizations", Khatami had achieved moderating the relation with United States. But due to various factors, he failed to realize the normalization of the two countries' relation. The Khatami government's new foreign policy opened the door of improving the relation with the surrounding countries, especially the relation with the Gulf countries. In addition, Iran also strengthened the relation with European Union and China by economic interest. At the same time, Iran also had enhanced cooperation with Russia in the military field to strengthen the country's military defense capability. During president Khatami period, although the Iranian diplomacy had made some achievements, it had problems. The diplomacy of this period presented characteristics of pacifism that is on the basis of moderation, economization and the balance of power.