In the aftermath of the revolution and during the war with Iraq, Iran experienced a major rise in its fertility rate. This baby boom became so alarming that the state as well as religious authorities along with academics and policy makers orchestrated a major campaign for birth control. While the campaign has been extremely successful what has remained obscure is how Iran managed to bring a fertility rate of 6.5 in 1970 down to 2 in 2002. This achievement can only be understood if one examines how women became engaged in public policies and the role they played as volunteer workers. Women’s role in the nationwide campaign has been critical and it has paved the way for putting Iran into the international discourse on women’s equality. Today, reproductive health is a matter of human rights as stated by Iran’s Family Planning Association, the largest NGO in the country staffed mainly by volunteer women.

Religion is a social phenomenon in America. Religious values coincide with civil attitudes is society. Therefore religion has a political status that is the result of religion’s social function and its worldly characteristics. Religious attitudes and its framework heavily influence the social capital where citizens realize their commitments and duties. In this regard, we are witnessing a triangle shaped by citizens, the government and religion. The concurrence of these three phenomena is rooted in the selective and conscious proximity among them.

According to systematic theories of international relations, the foreign policy of states is influenced by the structure of the international system. Thus a change in this structure, such as the breakdown of the bi-polar Cold War system, may have different effects on states’ foreign policy. France has tried, during the Cold War and after, to keep an independent foreign policy from the superpowers. The study of French foreign policy after the end of Cold War might poses considerable interest to IR scholars. In this article we seek to study the foreign policy of France in the Middle East, especially with respect to 1) the Arab-Israeli conflict; 2) the Iraqi crises of 1991 and 2003; and 3) the Iranian nuclear program. Our main question is: What are the main goals and strategies of French foreign policy in the Middle East after the end of Cold War? Our main hypothesis is as follows: the main goals of the French in the Middle East is 1) to promote multilateralism; 2) opposition to the American hegemony; and 3) to secure the flow of energy from the region. Its main strategies have been to resort to international law and international organizations in order to achieve its foreign policy goals.

The domino feature of colorful revolutions in Eurasia is, on the one hand, derived from the backward consocietal structure of the countries in the Central Asia and Caucasus; and on the other hand, by American neo-conservative interventionist foreign policy, which is pursuing global democratization. Both of these play a part in the occurrence of these revolutions. Employing the concept of failed states, the author emphasizes that the regime change strategy, which is the main feature of US foreign policy, is aimed at both active global democratization and the overthrow of failed states that because of their structural weaknesses have given rise to fundamentalist terrorism. Soft and velvet revolutions are part of US programs for overthrowing those failed states that hitherto had to be toppled, using hard strategies.

The UN is the most important international organization whose activities vary from international security issues and world peace to fighting against AIDS, promoting education, human rights and many other issues around the world. The UN consists of six principle organs, one of which is the Security Council. UN action, however, during the last six decades, particularly in the Cold War era, indicates that the Council is the most important and powerful organ. Yet, the problem is that due to the present combination of the members of the Security Council it reflects the “balance of power” system of the post-Second World War era, which does not fit in today’s world situation and international relations. Therefore, one can refer to the need for reform in this Council to enable it to respond to the emerging demands. This paper aims to study the need for structural reform in the UN Security Council. It tries to answer the question: What kinds of reform must be made in the Council? The main argument of the paper is that with a change in the structure of the international system after the Cold War, the emergence of the new world powers and, particularly, the increase of the UN members, structural reform in the Security Council is crucial. To maximize its legitimacy and influence the Council should be a reflection of the new world order.