Iran has been at the centre of numerous international controversies since its 1979 Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Strong anti-colonial, anti-authoritarian and Islamic sentiments during the 1979 Revolution have fuelled and legitimised the Iranian revolutionary discourses when confronting the West. The Islamic revolutionary ideology of the Islamic Republic and its continuing tension with the West, especially the United States, is the result of a swing in Iran’s official world view from a pro-Western, secular monarchic system to an anti-Western, post-colonial, theocratically-oriented system after 1979. This change has created a political...