Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa: Politics, Economics and Identity by Yasemin Akbaba & Ozgur Ozdamar

Author:Yasemin Akbaba & Ozgur Ozdamar [Akbaba, Yasemin & Ozdamar, Ozgur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351661683
Goodreads: 43661286
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

We suggest that the above-described material and ideational sources produced the following national role conceptions for Iran: ‘defender of faith,’ ‘anti-imperialist agent,’ ‘anti-Zionist agent’ and ‘internal development.’ The roles that surfaced in the case of the Syrian civil war are consistent with the general analysis on Iran. The most frequently mentioned roles, such as ‘defender of faith,’ ‘anti-imperialist agent,’ ‘liberation supporter’ and ‘anti-Zionist agent’ are all connected to Iran’s ‘example’ role, especially emphasized during the (failed) 2017 Syrian peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. Similarly, the ‘anti-imperialist’ role seems to include ‘anti-American’ and ‘anti-Zionist’ roles in that Israel and America are labeled as imperialist powers. Khamenei (2013) suggests that

the [p]ropaganda campaigns of the West and dependent and mercenary media in the region pretend that the destructive war in Syria is a Shia-Sunni conflict and they create a safety margin for the Zionists and the enemies of resistance in Syria and Lebanon. This is while the two sides of the conflict in Syria are not Shia and Sunni, rather they are the supporters and opponents of anti-Zionist resistance. Neither is the Syrian government a Shia government, nor is the secular and anti-Islam opposition a Sunni group. (Khamenei 2013)

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