The balance of ecumenism and sectarianism: rethinking religion and foreign policy in Iran*

Foreign policy development in the Islamic Republic is often conceived through secularizing homologies of ideology and pragmatism and radicalism and moderation. Policy practice, however, has often welded their crossed terms together religiously. This article seeks to resolve some contradictions in extant models by reconceiving of Iran’s foreign policy since 1979 as a religious system that differentiates contending values hierarchically. It explores policy in three periods representing particular balances of ecumenism and sectarianism: the revolutionary decade (1979–1989), the reformist interlude (1989–2005) and the era of radical reassertion (2005–2013). Rather than being perceived as fundamentally opposed orientations, ecumenism and sectarianism are presented as integrated tendencies of Shiite Islamism.