'Doomed to Good Relations': Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1985-1991

Iran was founded on the slogan of “Neither East Nor West”–neither alignment with the USSR nor the US. However, the end of the 1980s saw a rapprochement between Tehran and Moscow that would form the basis for relations between the country to present day. Drawing on archival resources and memoirs this talk explores how Mikhail Gorbachev and Iranian elites abandoned pretensions of leading the global anti-imperialist movement and sought to use relations with the other to navigate new world politics.