After the U.S invasion of IRAQ, Iran, Suadi Arabia and Turkey have attempted to expand their geopolitical influence in the Middle East. These actors have adopted different and various policies to achieve their goals. The present article explores the policies and strategies of Saudi Arabia and Turkey in new IRAQ. The findings of this article illustrate that these regional actors have attempted to restrain Iran’s political influence in IRAQ by taking advantage of social cleavages and the lack of national identity in this country. For doing so, the authors address the policies and reactions of regional powers in IRAQ and they apply a three level model to explore the developments in new IRAQ. At the national level, the lack of national identity, social cleavages and nation building in IRAQ have been examined. At the regional level, the competition between regional powers and at the international level, the approaches and strategies of the United Stated have been analyzed.

Some of the political observers and researchers consider federalism as an effective way for solving the problem of establishment of nation-state in societies which have multiple ethnic, religious and race structure. IRAQ, being a multi-ethnic and religious country, on the basis of article four of the provisional constitution and article one of the permanent constitution chose federalism as its form of government in post Saddam era. In spite of these provisions, there still exists a problematic condition about the future of federalism in IRAQ and the reason is due to certain innovations and ambiguities in IRAQi constitution and also legal and political problems about federation in that country.The present article examines these ambiguities and innovations. The article also shows that IRAQis have not used the positive experience of other federal systems. There also exist practical problems like geographical-territorial conditions, the problem of contending discourse about the place of Kurdistan in IRAQi political system. The above problems had led to a shaky position for IRAQi federalism and thus federalism is facing several challenges and problems.

America’s invasion to IRAQ in March 2003 led to the collapsed of the Baathist regime was the beginning of a new era in relationship with Iran. The demise of the Baathist regime, created a unique opportunity for the Islamic Republic until expansion the political and cultural power in IRAQ. Iran's influence was evident in official diplomatic and cordial relations with the new IRAQi government also cultural and unofficial dimension that is called as soft power. This paper describes Iran’s smart power in the country by combination of formal and informal diplomatic variables. The main research question is whether America's invasion of IRAQ has created opportunities for Iran's foreign policy regarding smart power. Basic assumption is that, according to the common historical background, cultural and religious orientated toward Tehran, the new government in IRAQ was Iran's Sphere of influence.

Iran-U.S. relations have been characterized by ideological inconsistencies as well as strategic competitions during the past decades. At times, their competition has been intensified particularly in the Middle East and placed the two countries at the verge of military confrontation. That said, observing the two countries’ relations with IRAQ is indicative of a different pattern. Unlike other areas, in IRAQ, Iran and the United States have taken distance form grand strategic competition and inclined towards some kind of indirect cooperation. In contrast to the two major viewpoints about Iran-U.S. relations in IRAQ which tend to describe them as either based on strategic cooperation or all-out confrontation, that the reality falls in between these two extreme views. What best describes the reality is that despite persistence of ideological inconsistencies and strategic conflicts in the Middle East, the geopolitical constraints in IRAQ and emergence of joint threats in this country have driven Iran and the United States towards indirect cooperation. In other words, emerging challenges and threats in IRAQ have introduced some grounds for cooperation between Iran and the United States.

Future IRAQ is a resultant of past and present situation, tendencies and trends of the effective internal and external actors, the future chances and challenges and their positive and negative internal and regional effects. This essay tries to give a strategic assessment of the future IRAQ through criticizing the idealist scenario which tells us about the new IRAQi constitution and the strategic aims defined by it for the future: creating democracy inside IRAQ and peace seeking in its foreign policy. The writer has used the structuralism approach to investigate this scenario and to give a strategic assessment of the future IRAQ. According to this approach, the history, geography, culture and political economy of IRAQ confines the idealist scenario and causes a struggle between ideals and realities.

Shaping and institutionalizing federalism as the most famous local-regional democratic governance requires extension of civic and democratic political culture, overcoming identity crisis, etc. Federalism was one of the mechanisms of international coalition under the leadership of America for stablishing peace and democracy in IRAQ, but it was fulfilled only in Kurdistan and not in central and southern regions. The aim of this article is the analysis of the impact of identity crisis and entrenched undemocratic political culture on nonfulfillment of federalism in IRAQ by using a political- sociological approach. The main question is that why federalism didn’t fulfill in IRAQ? In this article, the hypothesis is that: historical and entrenched identity crisis in IRAQ in the past century and the supremacy of subjective and religious-ethnic political culture over civic - democratic ones, have led to a failure in implementing federalism in this country. This article concludes that, the identity crisis due to imposed nation-state building in the recent decade, ethnic-religious violence and divergent political culture in post-Saddam IRAQ led to the un-fulfillment of federalism.

ISIS officially declared its presence in IRAQ since 2013 and was repressed by IRAQi government in 2017. It conducted several activities during this period. The question here is that, whether these conducts done by ISIS as a defeated insurgent group could be attributed to the IRAQi government or not? This article will show that principally ISIS’ non-sovereign and criminal conducts are not attributed to the IRAQi government. However, if exceptionally there were any fault from the government in repressing and pursuing ISIS or drawing peace pact or giving amnesty to its members, it was possible to attribute the conducts to the IRAQi government. In this respect, the misconducts of ISIS are not attributed to the IRAQi government since there were no fault on the part of the government in repressing and pursuing this group and there were no amnesty given to the members for committing international crimes. But with respect to those insurgent actions that are carried out in the economic, administrative and judicial areas for the management of controlled cities, under the following triple conditions they could be attributed to the IRAQi government provided that the nature of those behaviors is sovereign, the lack of government forces was evident and the need for such actions existed.