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Riccardo Redaelli is Associate Professor of Geopolitics, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milano, and Director of the Middle East Program, Landau Network — Centro Volta (LNCV), Como, Italy.
The Dichotomist Antagonist Posture in the Persian Gulf
Since the end of “Pax Britannica,” a zero-sum approach to Persian Gulf security has predominated. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s rhetoric and ideology in favor of “exporting the Revolution” to the Sunni Arab world coupled with the strong hostility of the Gulf Arab regimes toward the Islamic Republic of Iran reinforced a dichotomist mindset with respect to regional security. Iraq’s invasion of Iran and the taking of US diplomats as hostages by Iran (which compounded the severity of the fracture in US-Iran relations) exacerbated this trend.
